Studien und Plaudereien

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Studien und Plaudereien, by Sigmon 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 includes the original musical and artistic illustrations. See 22160-h.htm or 22160-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/1/6/22160/22160-h/22160-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/1/6/22160/22160-h.zip)
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 Fran?aise, 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 the book has disclosed little or nothing of importance that I really care to alter. Since the prefatory English letters to the teacher may perhaps have become superfluous, they have been suppressed in favor of several short German poems which will be found at