Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Learning through reading 

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[GESSNER, Salomon]. COURS DE LANGUE ALLEMANDE, ou Oeuvres diverses de Gesner, avec la traduction française interlinéaire, et la prononciation figurée: d’après la méthode de Luneau de Boisjermain. Ouvrage à l’aide duquel on peut apprendre la Langue Allemande en très-peu de tems, sans avoir besoin d’aucun Maître. Par une Société de Grammairiens Français et Allemands. Tome I [-II]. A Paris: chez Amable Costes et Ce., 1807. £450

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FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 8vo, pp. xv, [i] blank, 428; [iv], 509, [1] blank; some light foxing in places, and paper slightly browned throughout, but otherwise, apart from a couple of small tears to corners, clean; in slightly later calf-backed marbled boards; flat spines decorated and lettered in gilt, marbled edges; some wear to extremities.

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A nice copy of this very rare set of three works by Gessner, Daphnis, Der erste Schiffer, and Der Tod Abels, presented with an interlinear French translation and a phonetic French guide to the German pronunciation as an aid to French learners of German, following the method first used by Luneau de Boisgermain two decades previously. 

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The introduction sets out both the reasons for, and the difficulties of learning German: ‘The German language is the mother of most of the languages spoken in northern Europe. It is rich, energetic, sonorous, and is second only to Italian in its musicality; but it is much denser, more severe, more exact, more expressive, and more complicated in its inversions than Italian, which is to French and Portuguese as German is to Dutch and English; and it is much more difficult to learn...’ With that in mind, the editors, rather than bombarding the reader with a series of seemingly unrelated rules, have taken the approach which had met with much success with several languages, of taking a popular text, offering a verbatim translation interlinearly, and then at the foot of the page presenting a guide to pronunciation. This method not only will help with pronunciation, but also with syntax and with getting to grips with the character of the language, although it is not so self-explanatory that the editors do not also feel the need to give a brief grammatical introduction, with the declensions of articles, notes on adjectival agreement, and basic verb conjugation. 

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OCLC records copies at Bern, the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées, and the Belgian Royal Library. 

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