kitalálod-e, miért nincs
jelentősége –
Samuel Johnson szerint? (szerinted igaza
van?!) a fordítással komolyan tesztelheted magad, vajon tényleg
haladó vagy-e (vagy csak beképzelt)...
Segítség a nyelvtanhoz:
* feltételes mód (videó)
* feltételes mód_mondatok
* inkább, mint_mondatok
Wikipedia:
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [O.S. 7 September] – 13 December
1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who
made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist,
moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been
described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in
English history"...
In 1746, a group of publishers
approached Johnson with an idea about creating an authoritative
dictionary of the English language. A contract with William Strahan
and associates, worth 1,500 guineas, was signed on the morning of 18
June 1746. Johnson claimed that he could finish the project in three
years. In comparison, the Académie Française had forty scholars
spending forty years to complete their dictionary, which prompted
Johnson to claim, "This is the proportion. Let me see; forty
times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is
the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman." Although he did
not succeed in completing the work in three years, he did manage to
finish it in eight. Some criticised the dictionary, including Thomas
Babington Macaulay, who described Johnson as "a wretched
etymologist," but according to Bate, the Dictionary "easily
ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and
probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who laboured
under anything like the disadvantages in a comparable length of
time."...
...The Dictionary was finally
published in April 1755, with the title page acknowledging that
Oxford had awarded Johnson a Master of Arts degree in anticipation of
the work. The dictionary as published was a huge book. Its pages were
nearly 18 inches (46 cm) tall, and the book was 20 inches (51 cm)
wide when opened; it contained 42,773 entries, to which only a few
more were added in subsequent editions, and it sold for the
extravagant price of £4 10s, perhaps the rough equivalent of £350
today. An important innovation in English lexicography was to
illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which
there were approximately 114,000. The authors most frequently cited
include William Shakespeare, John Milton and John Dryden. It was
years beforeJohnson's Dictionary, as it came to be known, turned a
profit. Authors' royalties were unknown at the time, and Johnson,
once his contract to deliver the book was fulfilled, received no
further money from its sale. Years later, many of its quotations
would be repeated by various editions of the Webster's Dictionary and
the New English Dictionary.