[lit-ideas] "Letters to his Son" (Chesterfield, was: Monolinguism
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:04:42 EDT
J. Krueger is discussing Wittgenstein's opinion (received?) that the utterer
of a sentence in German or Latin must abide by what Wittgenstein calls a
'queer' syntax (word order)
>The author of the "queer order" sentence
>could be multi-lingual in romance languages, e.g., but also
>mono-cultural -- so much of what the word order in different languages
>reflects is a matter of cultural emphases, attitudes, etc.
This reminds me of Charles -- V, of Spain.
"To God I speak Spanish,
to women Italian,
to men French,
and to my horse -- German."
in Lord Chesterfield, "Letters to his Son"
--- I append below the context of the correspondence:
JLS
Dear Father,
It's good to be able to write back to you after I'm settled in Bayern.
Terry and I are thinking of doing a lot of shooting here in the Black
Wood -- as the Germans call it --. Actually, Terry suggests that
we enrole in this little language institute, run by an Austrian
Widower. We met her at the Von Triesen, and she expressed to
us a concern that we would be better by speaking the vernacular
to the natives,
Yours affectionately,
Horatio.
----
Dear Son,
Learn German? Let your beloved friend Terry do that. I
don't think you should occupy your precious mind with
conjugations and declensions in a language that is
so Gothick and rude and 'ugly', if I may say so --
especially to an English ear, like yours. I would quote
for you what that Holy Roman Emperor used to say,
that he would speak German to his horse only.
But _your_ horses, beautifully kept as they are at
Windsor Park -- do not need any kind of Teutonick
aggression of the sort.
Rather, I would strongly advice you to stick to
the Classics: Greek and Latin. They are the _only_
languages worth 'learning'. And while I know you
master then (or so your tutor at Eton tells me),
there's always room for improvement. One never
stops _learning_ a language.
With paternal love,
Chesterfield
Your Father
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