Frederick the Great discussion post 12

[cahn]

Every time I am amazed and enchanted that this is still going on! Truly DW is the Earthly Paradise!

All the good stuff continues to be archived at rheinsberg :)

Comments

Re: Lucchessini, Catt and Fredersdorf, oh, my

[mildred_of_midgard]

Masterful analysis! I love the attention to detail. Also, I knew this salon needed E-Enlightenment access!

My own speculations: If Voltaire and Fredersdorf were to have a conversation, it would probably have taken place in German, but if Voltaire started substituting French words when he didn't know the corresponding German word, it's possible that Fredersdorf would be able to understand.

Makes sense to me. Also, his own command of French aside, Fredersdorf might have been used to this kind of code-switching from Fritz already?

Tellingly, Voltaire snarks about the 'pureté du stile' of the original letter

Fredersdorf, I would have avoided venturing into French in this unforgiving environment as well. selenak, you were spot on.

(note: 'stile' is not deliberately misspelled to make fun of Fredersdorf's own spelling - Voltaire always spelt 'style' that way)

Linguistic note: it's not misspelled at all. It's the historically correct spelling in both English and French, since it comes from Latin stilus. The 'y' spelling is more recent, and is a "misspelling" due to a folk etymology: the belief that it's somehow related to the Greek word στῦλος.

Re: Lucchessini, Catt and Fredersdorf, oh, my

[gambitten]

Linguistic note: it's not misspelled at all. It's the historically correct spelling in both English and French, since it comes from Latin stilus. The 'y' spelling is more recent, and is a "misspelling" due to a folk etymology: the belief that it's somehow related to the Greek word στῦλος.

My bad. I had at first assumed that Voltaire's use of 'stile' was similar to his (apocryphal) use of 'poëshie' to make fun of Freytag's French, but checked by search and it's in lots of his letters. That's an interesting linguistic history!

Re: Lucchessini, Catt and Fredersdorf, oh, my

[mildred_of_midgard]

The PhD in historical linguistics comes in handy once in a blue moon. :D