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In: Language Education·DE Sachbuch·Children & Young Adult Reading
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #22160.
Dieses Werk ist ein Lehrbuch für deutsch‑englische Anfänger, das 1895 von Sigmon M. Stern herausgegeben wurde. Es richtet sich an wohlhabende amerikanische Kinder des späten 19. Jahrhunderts und kombiniert fast ausschließlich deutschsprachige Dialoge, Übungen und kurze Erzählungen mit wenigen erklärenden Anmerkungen. Der Einstieg erfolgt mit einem spielerischen Gespräch zwischen einem Lehrer und vier Schülern, in dem einfache Wörter, Farben, Zahlen und Grundbegriffe wie „Buch“, „Gras“ oder „Finger“ wiederholt werden. Die Struktur ist klar gegliedert: nach einer Einleitung folgen thematische Kapitel zu Uhrzeit, Jahreszeiten, Natur, Märchen und Alltag, die jeweils durch Fragen‑Antwort‑Sequenzen und kleine Grammatik‑Tabellen ergänzt werden. So lässt sich das Buch von Anfang an ohne weitere Hilfsmittel durcharbeiten.
Der Stil ist von einer leicht archaischen, aber gut verständlichen Sprache geprägt, die an die Reform der preußischen Rechtschreibung von 1901 erinnert. Die Erzählungen sind von einem höflichen, fast pathetischen Ton durchzogen, wobei die damalige Förmlichkeit („Sie“ statt „du“) für heutige Ohren ungewöhnlich wirkt. Wer Interesse an historischer Sprachdidaktik hat, besonders Lehrende, Sprachschüler oder Liebhaber viktorianischer Schulbücher, wird die lebendigen Dialoge, die kulturellen Anspielungen auf Gaslicht und Taschenuhren sowie die beiliegenden Fraktur‑ und Kurrentschrift‑Tabellen als reizvolle Einblicke in das Deutschlernen jener Zeit schätzen.
The opening · free to read
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.
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
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