Excerpt from Five Thousand French Idioms: Gallicisms, Proverbs, Idiomatic Adverbs, Idiomatic Adjectives, Idiomatic Comparisons Is there a need of such a book in colleges? Edward S. Joynes, professor of modern languages in South Carolina University, answers this question in the preface of his annotated edition of Le Cid, by Corneille: lt No language 1 is so superior to its grammar as the French; no language, 4 except perhaps the English itself, can be so poorly taught by grammatical methods or brought within grammatical kexplanations;in no language is the play of idiom more 1 lively and various and less within the control of ordinary 1 analysis. "In the modern languages especially, when the element1ary work ceases, the true idiomatic and literary difficulties 1 begin, but it is just here unfortunately, that our students 1 in modern languages are left without aid, For this reason, 4 so few of our scholars acquire a real taste for French. Professor Joynes wrote the above lines in 1869; since then, many annotated French text books have been edited by many French professors with a view of filling the need. All of these combined still leave incomplete the subjects of Idioms C1)and Gallicisms(2). Having found, during(1) Idiom is in French IJiotisme (Gr. idios) different from idiotie, stupidity. The French word idiome (Gr. Idiomd) means a dialect, particular to a pro vince; Vidiome hourguignon. (2)Gallicisms About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.