If only angels could prevail, we'd be the way we were

[sovay]

I am resolved to learn French out of Chardenal's Complete French Course: Revised Edition (Allyn and Bacon, Boston and Chicago: 1907) because my reading knowledge of French is all assimilated piecemeal and should be better, but mostly because we own the book.

It was once owned by someone named Ingersoll, whose first name is cursive incomprehensible, but who indicated their ownership on September 27th, 1912. There's a note in French on the facing endpaper signed by another someone named Sylvie on November 15th, but it's all in pencil and was erased by some later owner. I can make out traces here and there, but I'd need to be fluent in love to read even those. Hence the book, I suppose.

The preface concludes with a thanks to Professor Charles H. Grandgent of Harvard University. (I bet you he taught Latin. Any sum of money, I will stake it.) Was there ever a time when that last name wouldn't have sounded like a minor character in Dickens? There's something to be said for compound nouns, but only in other languages . . .

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I bet you he taught Latin.

Vulgar Latin: so he was no gent. Also, Romance linguistics and phonetics, Dante, and Old Provençal.

Nine

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Something something apprendre jusqu'a le dernier jour, as they said in Ballet Shoes. And it may be la for all I know. I forget the articles for dead-simple nouns like jour.

I think it's a brilliant time to take up a Romance language.

[kraada.livejournal.com]

He also has a Dante Prize named after him (http://www.dantesociety.org/prizes.html) and seems to have his own translation of the Divine Comedy.