Transcriber's Preface
This book is an introduction to German for English-speaking
children. It was aimed at well-to-do American children of the late
19th century. Even though nearly the entire book is in German, an
English speaker can read the book cover-to-cover without any other
reference work. This is a remarkable feat of authorship.
This book has long been one of my favorites. I used it myself while
learning the German language. I've used it as a teaching aid when
tutoring German. I've really enjoyed rereading it while preparing the
present transcription.
The language is a little archaic, but is not terribly far from modern
German usage. Some footnotes note archaic forms in the text, but they
are by no means complete. Probably the most profound change has been a
decrease in formality. To today's ear, the children using »Sie« to
each other is most peculiar.
The references to contemporary people and popular culture provide a
distinctive and amusing insight into pre-war Germany. I'm particularly
amused by the numerous references to modern conveniences like gas
lights and pocket watches. Ja Fritz, we have not always had digital
wristwatches with electroluminescent backlighting...
Of notable interest to students of older German texts, is the table on
page 247 (the 2nd leaf of the Tables of Grammar), which shows Fraktur
and the old German Kurrentschrift along side the more familiar
Latin script. Hand written material of the time is written with
Kurrentschrift--one of the most difficult handwriting systems I've
ever had to read.
It is my hope that this wonderful text can provide instruction in the
German language to many more generations of students. I am pleased to
provide it with well-deserved preservation.
Conventions and Mechanical Notes
German of this period was printed in Fraktur, a very different
typeface from the family of Latin typefaces we use now. Throughout the
text, text which was NOT printed in Fraktur is {between braces}.
Text originally presented in bold is enclosed in **'s, except for
character names, which are simply left unmarked. Italic is
represented with leading and trailing underscores, and all spaces
converted to underscores.
Illustrations are identified with [Illustration: description].
Musical notation is similarly represented [Musik: Titel] and is
subsequently followed by the words of the song. As much as practical,
words follow the formatting of the original text, to the point that
syllables are aligned among verses.
References for editorial notes are represented [I-1] where "I" is the
section number and "1" is the note number within the section. Note
identifiers match between the HTML and text editions. The text
edition includes the text of music inline, so those notes are omitted.
Remaining uses of [] are in the original text.
The text has been reflowed to a 70 character line without hyphens.
Poetry approximates the original formatting as closely as permitted by
ASCII.
I am most grateful to the folks at Project Gutenberg Distributed
Proofing. This is very likely the most accurate edition of Studien
und Plaudereien ever prepared. The PGDP folks uncovered more than
forty errors in the 16th edition, about half of which were corrected
for the 18th edition.
La Monte H.P. Yarroll
piggy@baqaqi.chi.il.us
June 2006
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA