MT retaliates by correcting his French. And his Latin. And his Italian. (Which he admits to Wilhelmine is weak in the letter where he sends her his opera Montezuma, which has to be in Italian because most operas were, until Mozart and Die Entführung aus dem Serail.)
MT was fluent, though unlike Fritz, she also was fluent in German, which she spoke with a Viennese accent. There was a joke in Austria at the time re: the Austrian nobility, that they spoke Latin like Cicero, French like a Parisian, and German like their nurse. Which was literally true in that their nurses - both wetnurses and nurses in the toddler years - were the only ones speaking German to the noble kids, and they of course were not nobles. Meaning the German they spoke was literally the language of the people, deemed vulgar by the nobility. Note that Wilhelmine, who could be a snob, is making fun of MT's older cousin the Empress married to the Wittelsbach guy for her Austrian accent and for insisting to speak German, not French. MT, having been raised to be a spouse to European royalty, spoke French just fine and corresponded in French not just with her youngest daughter (Marie Antoinette), but she didn't have Fritz' hangups about the German language. There's an affectionate, playful letter of hers to Franz Stefan from their engagement time where she keeps switching between French, German and Italian and writes stuff like "je vous adore, mio Mausi".
re: the Latin: being taught hardcore old fashioned Catholicism by a Jesuit does have its drawbacks for one's future mind in the of the Enlightenment, but it does provide one with first class Latin.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
War of the Roses, Rokoko Edition
Date: 2019-10-02 11:17 am (UTC)MT was fluent, though unlike Fritz, she also was fluent in German, which she spoke with a Viennese accent. There was a joke in Austria at the time re: the Austrian nobility, that they spoke Latin like Cicero, French like a Parisian, and German like their nurse. Which was literally true in that their nurses - both wetnurses and nurses in the toddler years - were the only ones speaking German to the noble kids, and they of course were not nobles. Meaning the German they spoke was literally the language of the people, deemed vulgar by the nobility. Note that Wilhelmine, who could be a snob, is making fun of MT's older cousin the Empress married to the Wittelsbach guy for her Austrian accent and for insisting to speak German, not French. MT, having been raised to be a spouse to European royalty, spoke French just fine and corresponded in French not just with her youngest daughter (Marie Antoinette), but she didn't have Fritz' hangups about the German language. There's an affectionate, playful letter of hers to Franz Stefan from their engagement time where she keeps switching between French, German and Italian and writes stuff like "je vous adore, mio Mausi".
re: the Latin: being taught hardcore old fashioned Catholicism by a Jesuit does have its drawbacks for one's future mind in the of the Enlightenment, but it does provide one with first class Latin.