USAGE: French (was: Essential Swedish?)

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!

> 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.

--
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan@reutershealth.com
"'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull
as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the
large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will
jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'"
        --the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake

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