Studien und Plaudereien

Studien und Plaudereien, by
Sigmon Stern

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Stern
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Title: Studien und Plaudereien First Series
Author: Sigmon Stern

Release Date: July 27, 2007 [eBook #22160]
Language: German
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIEN
UND PLAUDEREIEN***
E-text prepared by La Monte H. P. Yarroll, Markus Brenner, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which
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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 [email protected] June 2006 Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, USA

Studien und Plaudereien
FIRST SERIES
by
SIGMON M. STERN
Author of Studien und Plaudereien Second Series, Étude Progressive
de la Langue Française, and Editor of Selected German Comedies
WITH GRAMMATICAL TABLES
SIXTEENTH EDITION, REVISED

[Illustration: Henry Holt Trademark]
New York Henry Holt and Company F. W. Christern Boston: Carl
Schoenhof 1895

»Prüfet alles, behaltet das Gute, und wenn etwas Besseres in euch
selber gereift, so setzt es zu dem, was ich euch in diesen Bogen in
Wahrheit und Liebe zu geben versuche, in Wahrheit und Liebe hinzu.«
--Pestalozzi.

Copyright, 1879, 1895. by Sigmon M. Stern.

PREFACE TO THE SIXTEENTH EDITION.

New electrotype plates have been made for this edition, not from any
desire of mine for change, but because of the worn condition of the old
plates. Fifteen years' constant use of