In article u,
Michael Uplawski wrote:

(I am reading Henry Fielding, so my English will improve before long).

Indeed, it will - most native English speakers avoid that sort of
thing! Which one, incidentally?

Joseph Andrews.

Ah. Not one I have read, but I mean to, sometime.

I just finished John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat and could choose between
Essais by Michel de Montaigne (in French), Stories and Poems of
Thomas Hardy and Henry Fielding's novel.

Just peeking in at some random spots is enough to be glued to Fielding.
It always astonishes me, how the English from that epoch is so catchy
and comprehensible while our old german authors often appear to have
written in a “foreign” language, that I find terribly flowery or
stilted. Already the preface (by Fielding) is a joy to read.

literary English hasn't changed all that much since then, but the
reason most native English speakers get caught out is that colloquial
English has. It gets a bit trickier as you go back, but not all
that much, until before Shakespeare et al.

One of the things I intend to do in my retirement is to relearn to
read French - I shall never speak it, because I can't hear it, but
I used to be able to read up to Pierre Boulle (not Camus, though).
I can hear northern German, but my knowledge is very limited.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.