Ar an tríú lá is fiche de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Ross Clark:
"I haven't found linguistic topics discussed in his writing, apart from passing
references...."
Still, a solid Victorian, interested in all kinds of things: medicine, cricket,
body-building, fairies....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle
Bit of relevance in the article:
“From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in
Feldkirch, Austria.[9] His family decided that he would spend a year there in
order to perfect his German and broaden his academic horizons.[15]”
“In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the study of ophthalmology in Vienna. [...]
Doyle found it too difficult to understand the German medical terms being
used in his classes in Vienna, and soon quit his studies there. For the rest
of his two-month stay in Vienna, he pursued other activities, such as ice
skating with his wife Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Richards of the
London Times. He also wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw.”
I find those grounds surprising (“too difficult to understand the German medical terms”); I’m sure it would have been difficult to get through a year of
boarding school in Austria without picking up German, and medical jargon in German is Greek and Latin as it is in English. (Was ophthalmology different then?). But he was a dilettante, qual piuma al vento.
--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)
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