From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   Now there's a linguistically interesting writer.   
   Grew up in an upper-class Russian family where of course much French was   
   spoken. Also had an English-speaking nanny.   
      
   "The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and   
   Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first   
   English book his mother read to him was Misunderstood (1869) by Florence   
   Montgomery. Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could   
   read and write in English before he could in Russian."   
      
   Every time Nabokov comes up, I want to refer to an exchange between him   
   and the critic Edmund Wilson that I read long ago, in which N amusingly   
   shows up the irreducible subjectivity of people's judgments about the   
   "character" or "quality" of different languages.   
   Trouble is I can't find it any more. I've tried.   
      
   (...) it's late. Maybe somebody else will have some thoughts.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)