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From: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Vladimir Nabokov born (22-4-1899)
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:18:56 +0200
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On 2024-04-22 11:42:42 +0000, Ross Clark said:

> Now there's a linguistically interesting writer.
> Grew up in an upper-class Russian family where of course much French 
> was spoken. Also had an English-speaking nanny.
> 
> "The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and 
> Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first 
> English book his mother read to him was Misunderstood (1869) by 
> Florence Montgomery. Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, 
> Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian."

My youngest daughter could read and write in Spanish before she could 
in English, but I wasn't disappointed, and English and French weren't 
far behind. After all, Spanish spelling is much easier than English (or 
French).
> 
> Every time Nabokov comes up, I want to refer to an exchange between him 
> and the critic Edmund Wilson that I read long ago,

Likewise.

>  in which N amusingly shows up the irreducible subjectivity of people's 
> judgments about the "character" or "quality" of different languages.
> Trouble is I can't find it any more. I've tried.

Likewise. There are lots of articles _about_ the letters on the web, 
but not the letters themselves.
> 
> (...) it's late. Maybe somebody else will have some thoughts.


-- 
Athel cb