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foxdna OP t1_itioe4p wrote

Reply to comment by jefrye in The way people speak in The Count of Monte Cristo. Can someone explain? by foxdna

Ahh I’m learning much about French society just from reading this book. Yeah, I was thinking that Dumas probably was making the dialogue more “dramatic”.

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Glitz-1958 t1_itjpr7n wrote

Even today French can be much more flowery than English has been for some time. For example formulas to use in formal letter writing seem very elaborate in comparison. Plus people are much more likely to say sir or madam in a casual exchange. Merci, Madame. To which the reply is Je vous en prie.

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MysteriousLie3841 t1_itkm1ym wrote

In French: Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués.

In English: Sincerely,

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spyczech t1_itjqtpk wrote

A good note on the dramatic side is each chapter being a newspaper release originally, which makes the chapters flow really well for me and be nice and dramatic as he wanted folks to buy the next periodical to read it

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MewsashiMeowimoto t1_itlji72 wrote

A lot of old books were published this way. I think Dickens was published in serial, too.

I always think about it whenever I'm watching netflix show episodes that end with a teaser that make you want to watch the next one.

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VirtualMoneyLover t1_itkmwv8 wrote

Some of those novels were published in newspapers as a series. Writers got paid by lines, not by the book. So they fluffed up the dialogues.

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Kradget t1_itl6swb wrote

Yeah, bear in mind that a lot of older works have what reads today as pretty stilted language, too, and it takes a bit of getting used to.

Edit: also, English is a very compact language, but there's also the lack of formal cases, so translation is kind of a whole thing.

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