Hello,
2004-03-03T15:35:39+03:00 John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> Philippe Caquant scripsit:
>> If you look at postcards from Russia from 1900, you'll notice that
>> not only the legend is in French and Russian, but also the signs on
>> the city shops for ex are often translated into French. And Russia
>> was not the only example for this.
> But it is a special case: the Russian aristocracy (and to a lesser
> degree the Russian bourgeoisie) disdained the Russian language as fit
> only for peasants. Consider _War and Peace_, which notoriously begins
> in French!
Not only this. Learning a number of languages was a major part of
education. French, English, and Latin are just a few examples of what
people ought to know. There were different opinions about Russian of
course. Some aristocrats preferred to develop it (e.g., poets).
>> That was in the good old times. Now we regressed to
>> the status of Estonia, no offence to Estonians.
> Well, hardly. French is still the official or national language of
> at least thirty countries and parts of others.
And a beautiful language by itself.
Alexander.
--
Alexander Savenkov http://www.xmlhack.ru/
savenkov@xmlhack.ru http://www.xmlhack.ru/authors/croll/