15 July 2008

Pierre Menard does Berlitz

"The best method of acquiring the Spanish language is to establish oneself in a good casa de pupilos, to avoid English society and conversation, to read Don Quixote through and aloud before a master of a morning, and to be schooled by female tongues of an evening."
-- Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travellers in Spain, 3rd edn. (1855), part 1, p. 67.

13 July 2008

Counterpossibles in popular culture

Jimi Hendrix's "If 6 Was 9" comes to mind. Any others?