1. Alphabets. You won’t believe the wonderful stuff on this site. A couple of examples: evolution from Phoenecian to Latin, and language families (useful for checking on French language names: of the Dravidian languages, “Telougou” is obvious, but “Tamoul” and “Canara” are not). Just scroll down the sidebar and keep clicking.
2. A nice little Anthologie de la poésie, with poems both French and translated (including Wendell Berry and Meleager). The best-represented author is Victor Hugo, and there will be no “Hélas” from me*; if you can read French and haven’t read “Booz endormi,” do so at once. The line “Tout reposait dans Ur et dans Jerimadeth” contains the pure essence of poetry.
*When Gide was asked who in his opinion was the greatest poet in the French language, he responded: “Victor Hugo, alas!”
Update (Oct. 2023). Alas, La grande rousse lasted only three years — the last post was mars 31, 2005. I liked that blog…
Brilliant – always like a bit of alphabeticality.
Is it Uzbekistan where they are using three sets now? Soviet Cyrillic. Ataturk-style Latin, and Islamicist Arabic? May a hundred squiggles bloom!
By the way, though you restored the original page look now – I’d just like to say, the deviant one was not that bad in my view!
This older one is better, but the other was not as much of a disaster as you seemed to think….
M is for Marvelous.
Thanks, Mark — I appreciate the comforting words, but here’s what thisclassicallife.com had to say:
“In other news, if this kind fellow wouldn’t mind turning down the font size a touch, I just might become hooked.”
“This kind fellow” was, alas, me.
Glad my little discoveries pleased you ! ;)) (hope my English here is ok…I understand it very well but write it very badly ;((
Mais voyons, c’est du baratin! Pas de problème avec l’anglais. Et je suis ravi de vous voir ici…