158-505: Honoré de Balzac ( / ˈ b æ l z æ k / BAL -zak , more commonly US : / ˈ b ɔː l -/ BAWL - ; French: [ɔnɔʁe d(ə) balzak] ; born Honoré Balzac ; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine , which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus . Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac
316-707: A cot–caught merger , which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older cot–caught distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is particularly marked , as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee ( talk and coffee ), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal : [oə] . A split of TRAP into two separate phonemes , using different
474-448: A breast pump , in order to feed an infant. Gabrielle Palmer , author of The Politics of Breastfeeding , states: There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously (known as 'tandem feeding')...some women could theoretically be able to feed up to five babies. Wet nursing is an ancient practice, common to many societies. It has been linked to social class, where monarchies,
632-537: A classified advertisement in the Gazette de France , hoping that his anonymous critic would see it. Thus began a fifteen-year correspondence between Balzac and "the object of [his] sweetest dreams": Ewelina Hańska . Ewelina ( née Rzewuska) was married to a nobleman twenty years her senior, Marshal Wacław Hański , a wealthy Polish landowner living near Kyiv . It had been a marriage of convenience to preserve her family 's fortune. In Balzac Countess Ewelina found
790-459: A pallbearer and the eulogist at Balzac's funeral. Some modern researchers have attributed a factor in his death to excessive coffee consumption or a caffeine overdose (Balzac reportedly drank over 50 cups a day) but this has yet to be proved. Balzac is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. At his memorial service, Victor Hugo pronounced "Today we have people in black because of the death of
948-520: A pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə] , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents. Most Americans preserve all historical /r/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent . The only traditional r -dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England , New York City , and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across
1106-453: A "Horace de Saint-Aubin". These books were potboiler novels, designed to sell quickly and titillate audiences. In Saintsbury's view, "they are curiously, interestingly, almost enthrallingly bad". Saintsbury indicates that Robert Louis Stevenson tried to dissuade him from reading these early works of Balzac. American critic Samuel Rogers, however, notes that "without the training they gave Balzac, as he groped his way to his mature conception of
1264-528: A Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. Honoré de Balzac was born into a family which aspired to achieve respectability through its industry and efforts. His father, born Bernard-François Balssa, was one of eleven children from an artisan family in Tarn , a region in the south of France. In 1760 he set off for Paris with only a Louis coin in his pocket, intent on improving his social standing ; by 1776 he had become Secretary to
1422-614: A bridge over the river Loire . In 1816 Balzac entered the Sorbonne , where he studied under three famous professors: François Guizot , who later became Prime Minister , was Professor of Modern History; Abel-François Villemain , a recent arrival from the Collège Charlemagne , lectured on French and classical literature; and, most influential of all, Victor Cousin 's courses on philosophy encouraged his students to think independently. Once his studies were completed, Balzac
1580-562: A child and leave the infant to the care of relatives or a hired wet nurse, while they returned to Egypt to seek new employment and a new charge to nurse. This constitutes the origin of the archetype of the aleksandrinka as a wet nurse, which came to overpower any other representation of the aleksandrinstvo , despite the fact that empirical evidence demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of aleksandrinke at any time worked as wet nurses. The majority of aleksandrinke were working as nannies or chamber maids, they were not breastfeeding
1738-501: A chronic or acute illness, and either the illness itself, or the treatment for it, reduces or stops her milk. This absence of lactation may be temporary or permanent. There was a greater need for wet nurses when the rates of infant abandonment and maternal death , during and shortly after childbirth , were high. There was a concurrent availability of lactating women whose own babies had died . Some women chose not to breastfeed for social reasons. For upper-class women, breastfeeding
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#17327651075811896-436: A closely plotted novella of only fifty pages. According to the literary critic Kornelije Kvas, "Balzac's use of the same characters (Rastignac, Vautrin) in different parts of The Human Comedy is a consequence of the realist striving for narrative economy". Balzac's work habits were legendary. He wrote from 1 A.M. to 8 A.M. every morning and sometimes even longer. Balzac could write very rapidly; some of his novels, written with
2054-631: A complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling , while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England ,
2212-447: A consonant, such as in pearl , car and fort . Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel, such as some accents of Eastern New England , New York City , and African-Americans , and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners , are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated. Rhoticity
2370-441: A garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him", while the rest of the family moved to a house twenty miles (32 km) outside Paris. Balzac's first project was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire , based on Lord Byron 's The Corsair . Realizing he would have trouble finding a composer, however, he turned to other pursuits. In 1820 Balzac completed
2528-475: A genius!" Although he originally called it Etudes des Mœurs (literally 'Studies of manners', or 'The Ways of the World') it eventually became known as La Comédie humaine , and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement. After the collapse of his businesses, Balzac traveled to Brittany and stayed with
2686-571: A good knowledge of hanging wallpaper. Balzac transferred this to his descriptions of the Pension Vauquer in Le Père Goriot , making the wallpaper speak of the identities of those living inside. Some critics consider Balzac's writing exemplary of naturalism —a more pessimistic and analytical form of realism, which seeks to explain human behavior as intrinsically linked with the environment. French novelist Émile Zola declared Balzac
2844-468: A hungry baby in a village. Wet nurses are still common in many developing countries , although the practice poses a risk of infections, such as HIV. In China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, a wet nurse may be employed in addition to a nanny as a mark of aristocracy, wealth, and high status. Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal , in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies,
3002-508: A kindred spirit for her emotional and social desires, with the added benefit of feeling a connection to the glamorous capital of France. Their correspondence reveals an intriguing balance of passion, propriety and patience; Robb says it is "like an experimental novel in which the female protagonist is always trying to pull in extraneous realities but which the hero is determined to keep on course, whatever tricks he has to use". Marshal Hański died in 1841, and his widow and her admirer finally had
3160-484: A massive temporal rift; the first part (of four) covers a span of six years, while the final two sections focus on just three days. Le Cousin Pons (1847) and La Cousine Bette (1848) tell the story of Les Parents Pauvres ( The Poor Relations ). The conniving and wrangling over wills and inheritances reflect the expertise gained by the author as a young law clerk. Balzac's health was deteriorating by this point, making
3318-408: A medical journalist writing in the late 1850s, listed the evils of wet nursing, such as the abandonment of the wet nurses' own children, higher infant mortality, and an increased physical and moral risk to a nursed child. While this argument was not founded in any sort of proof, the emotional arguments of medical researchers, coupled with the protests of other critics, slowly increased public knowledge;
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#17327651075813476-570: A member of the household all her days. (Genesis 35:8.) Midrashic commentaries on the Torah hold that the Egyptian princess Bithiah (Pharaoh's wife Asiya in the Islamic Hadith and Qur'an ) attempted to wet-nurse Moses , but he would take only his biological mother's milk. ( Exodus 2:6–9 ) In Greek mythology , Eurycleia is the wet nurse of Odysseus . In Roman mythology , Caieta
3634-591: A merger with the THOUGHT ( caught ) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/ , /θ/ , and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong ), and variably by region or speaker in gone , on , and certain other words. Unlike American accents,
3792-417: A near-fatal accident in 1832 (he slipped and cracked his head on the street), Balzac decided not to stand for election. 1831 saw the success of La Peau de chagrin ( The Wild Ass's Skin or The Magic Skin ), a fable-like tale about a despondent young man named Raphaël de Valentin who finds an animal skin which promises great power and wealth. He obtains these things, but loses the ability to manage them. In
3950-636: A nice day , for sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey , boost, bulldoze and jazz , originated as American slang. American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs . Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation , major, and many others. Compounds coined in
4108-480: A process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to
4266-410: A quill, were composed at a pace equal to thirty words per minute on a modern typewriter. His preferred method was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. He then rose and wrote for many hours, fueled by innumerable cups of black coffee. He often worked for fifteen hours or more at a stretch; he claimed to have once worked for 48 hours with only three hours of rest in
4424-558: A reciprocal act known as cross-nursing or co-nursing . In contemporary affluent Western societies such as the United States, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural discomfort. When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is expressed milk (or especially colostrum ), which is donated to milk banks , analogous to blood banks , and processed there by being screened, pasteurized, and usually frozen. Infant formula
4582-417: A relatively far distance away. The Bureau of Wet Nurses was created in Paris in 1769 to serve two main purposes: it supplied parents with wet nurses, as well as helping lessen the neglect of babies by controlling monthly salary payments. In order to become a wet nurse, women had to meet a few qualifications, including physical fitness and good moral character; they were often judged on their age, their health,
4740-474: A result, he was frequently sent to the "alcove", a punishment cell reserved for disobedient students. (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied: "Remember M. Balzac? I should think I do! I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times!") Still, his time alone gave the boy ample freedom to read every book which came his way. Balzac worked these scenes from his boyhood—as he did many aspects of his life and
4898-680: A series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the " Inland North ". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents ) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u] ) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ] ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker
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5056-714: A stereotype of a "Mammy" character. From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, and especially after World War I , thousands of Slovene peasant women migrated via Trieste to the cosmopolitan port city of Alexandria . There, these aleksandrinke [ sl ] undertook various sorts of domestic work for elite Levantine households—"the highly mobile upper strata of Ottoman millets, Jewish, Maronites, Melkite active in international commerce". Enough served as wet nurses that this occupation became almost synonymous with Slovene domestic workers, which resulted in some stigma back home. Married women could leave Alexandria and return to their home village, where they would conceive and bear
5214-462: A survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink , you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in
5372-455: A treatise on "the means of preventing thefts and murders, and of restoring the men who commit them to a useful role in society", in which he heaped disdain on prison as a form of crime prevention.) In 1814 the Balzac family moved to Paris, and Honoré was sent to private tutors and schools for the next two and a half years. This was an unhappy time in his life, during which he attempted suicide on
5530-512: A treatment; however, it could not be safely administered to infants. In 1780, it began the process of giving mercury to wet nurses, who could then transmit the treatment in their milk to infected infants. The practice of wet-nursing was still widespread during World War I, according to the American Red Cross . Working-class women would leave their babies with wet nurses so they could get jobs in factories. British colonists brought
5688-453: A variation of American English in these islands. In 2021, about 245 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. 32 of the 50 states, in some cases as part of what has been called
5846-416: A wet nurse for a few months at a time since it was believed that the quality of a woman's breast milk would lessen over time. Child-minding, different from wet-nursing, was also commonly an additional job on top of child rearing and nursery tending. Employed wet nurses were typically paid low wages and worked long hours. Workers in the 1900s demanded work contracts to provide stable wages. Wet nursing work
6004-409: A wet nurse, or permanently to another family. The woman herself might in turn become wet nurse to a wealthier family, while using part of her wages to pay her own child's wet nurse. From Roman times and into the present day, philosophers and thinkers alike have held the view that the important emotional bond between mother and child is threatened by the presence of a wet nurse. In pre-modern times, it
6162-553: A writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience. Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska ( née Contessa Rzewuska ),
6320-492: A young poet trying to make a name for himself, who becomes trapped in the morass of society's darkest contradictions. Lucien's journalistic work is informed by Balzac's own failed ventures in the field. Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes ( The Harlot High and Low , 1847) continues Lucien's story. He is trapped by the Abbé Herrera ( Vautrin ) in a convoluted and disastrous plan to regain social status. The book undergoes
6478-654: Is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT – CLOTH split : a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set ) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into
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6636-604: Is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin , and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English , beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands ; Thomasites first established
6794-462: Is also widely available, which its makers claim can be a reliable source of infant nutrition when prepared properly. Dr. Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet nurses are cultural: The exchange of body fluids between different women and children, and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable. The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency. Societies with breast fetishes tend to conflate
6952-618: Is commemorated on 16 May, four days before Balzac's birthday) was actually the second child born to the Balzacs; exactly one year earlier, Louis-Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month. Honoré's sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, and his younger brother Henry-François in 1807. As an infant Balzac was sent to a wet nurse ; the following year he was joined by his sister Laure and they spent four years away from home. (Although Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's influential book Émile convinced many mothers of
7110-538: Is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during
7268-610: Is found in the " help wanted " ads of newspapers, through complaints about wet nurses in magazines, and through medical journals that acted as employment agencies. In the Southern United States before the Civil War , it was common practice for enslaved black women to be forced to be wet nurses to their owners' children. In some instances, the enslaved child and the white child would be raised together in their younger years. (Sometimes both babies would be fathered by
7426-420: Is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality : [aː] , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a " Southern drawl " that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels . The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH , and STRUT tends to also define Southern accents as well as
7584-508: Is reflective of the author's own life, a possible attempt to stabilize it through fiction. "The vanishing man", wrote Sir Victor Pritchett, "who must be pursued from the rue Cassini to ... Versailles , Ville d'Avray , Italy, and Vienna can construct a settled dwelling only in his work". Balzac's extensive use of detail, especially the detail of objects, to illustrate the lives of his characters made him an early pioneer of literary realism . While he admired and drew inspiration from
7742-720: Is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature . He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola , Charles Dickens , Marcel Proust , Gustave Flaubert , and Henry James , and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette . Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really
7900-468: Is the common language at home, in public, and in government. Wet nurse A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some societies, the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship . Wet-nursing existed in societies around
8058-469: Is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/ , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park the car in Harvard Yard . Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston , Pittsburgh , Upper Midwestern , and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the THOUGHT vowel ( /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ , respectively):
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#17327651075818216-613: The Digest of Roman law even refers to a wage dispute for wet-nursing services ( nutricia ). The landmark known as the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") may have been a place where wet nurses could be hired. It was considered admirable for upperclass women to breastfeed their own children , but unusual and old-fashioned in the Imperial era . Even women of the working classes or slaves might have their babies nursed, and
8374-551: The Catholic Church . In the preface to La Comédie humaine he wrote: "Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being ... a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order". In the late 1820s Balzac dabbled in several business ventures, a penchant his sister blamed on the temptation of an unknown neighbour. His first enterprise was in publishing which turned out cheap one-volume editions of French classics including
8532-482: The English-only movement , have adopted legislation granting official or co-official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which another language – Spanish –
8690-585: The King's Council and a Freemason (he had also changed his name to the more noble sounding "Balzac", his son later adding—without official recognition—the nobiliary particle : " de "). After the Reign of Terror (1793–94), François Balzac was despatched to Tours to coordinate supplies for the Army . Balzac's mother, born Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. Her family's wealth
8848-622: The Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent ), and the South . As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area , Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə] . These sound changes have triggered
9006-551: The Native American languages . Examples of such names are opossum , raccoon , squash , moose (from Algonquian ), wigwam , and moccasin . American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse , from French ; cookie , from Dutch ; kindergarten from German , and rodeo from Spanish . Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and
9164-636: The Nurse empress dowager . Wet nurses were also common during the Mughal period , with almost every Mughal prince having one. Some prominent ones are Maham Anga for Akbar and Dai Anga for Shah Jahan . Shin Myo Myat was the mother of King Bayinnaung of the Toungoo dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), and the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti . The last Emperor of China , Puyi , described Wang Lianshou as being
9322-503: The Romantic style of Scottish novelist Walter Scott, Balzac sought to depict human existence through the use of particulars. In the preface to the first edition of Scènes de la Vie privée , he wrote: "the author firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit of works". Plentiful descriptions of décor, clothing, and possessions help breathe life into the characters. For example, Balzac's friend Henri de Latouche had
9480-533: The Victorian era , women took in babies for money and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest. This was known as baby-farming ; poor care sometimes resulted in high infant death rates . The wet nurse at this period was most likely a single woman who previously had given birth to an illegitimate child. There were two types of wet nurses by this time: those on poor relief , who struggled to provide sufficiently for themselves or their charges, and
9638-415: The aristocracy , nobility , or upper classes had their children wet-nursed for the benefit of the child's health, and sometimes in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly. Exclusive breastfeeding inhibits ovulation in some women ( lactational amenorrhea ). Poor women, especially those who suffered the stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child, sometimes had to give their baby up temporarily to
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#17327651075819796-417: The chateau is a museum dedicated to the author's life. In 1833, as he revealed in a letter to his sister, Balzac entered into an illicit affair with fellow writer Maria Du Fresnay, who was then aged 24. Her marriage to a considerably older man (Charles du Fresnay, Mayor of Sartrouville ) had been a failure from the outset. In this letter, Balzac also reveals that the young woman had just come to tell him she
9954-722: The francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred programme for program , manoeuvre for maneuver , cheque for check , etc.). AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize . BrE prefers -ise , but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling ). There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences , called " comma splices " in American English, and American English prefers that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors
10112-764: The 18th century; apartment , shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium , townhouse , mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof ( driveway , breezeway, backyard ) . Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology ) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ( dirt roads , freeways ) to infrastructure ( parking lot , overpass , rest area ), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store , shop , lumber —underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in
10270-546: The 20th century. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas . The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing
10428-558: The Balzac Monument has stood since 1939 nearby the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse at Place Pablo-Picasso. Rodin featured Balzac in several of his smaller sculptures as well. The Comédie humaine remained unfinished at the time of his death—Balzac had plans to include numerous other books, most of which he never started. He frequently flitted between works in progress . "Finished articles" were frequently revised between editions. This piecemeal style
10586-627: The British form is a back-formation , such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar ). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems. While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions. The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in
10744-602: The De Pommereul family outside Fougères . There he drew inspiration for Les Chouans (1829), a tale of love gone wrong amid the Chouan royalist forces. Although he was a supporter of the Crown , Balzac paints the revolutionaries in a sympathetic light—even though they are the center of the book's most brutal scenes. This was the first book Balzac released under his own name, and it gave him what one critic called "passage into
10902-413: The East Coast (perhaps in imitation of 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious in the 20th century. The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ ɹ̠ ] or retroflex approximant [ ɻ ] , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound
11060-571: The Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity , the father–bother merger , Mary–marry–merry merger , pre-nasal "short a " tensing , and other particular vowel sounds . General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in
11218-504: The Promised Land". It established him as an author of note (even if its historical fiction-genre imitates that of Sir Walter Scott ) and provided him with a name outside his past pseudonyms. Soon afterwards, around the time of his father's death, Balzac wrote El Verdugo —about a 30-year-old man who kills his father (Balzac was 30 years old at the time). This was the first work signed "Honoré de Balzac". He followed his father in
11376-542: The Roman-era Greek gynecologist Soranus offers detailed advice on how to choose a wet nurse. Inscriptions such as religious dedications and epitaphs indicate that a nutrix would be proud of her profession. One even records a nutritor lactaneus , a male "milk nurse" who presumably used a bottle. Greek nurses were preferred, and the Romans believed that a baby who had a Greek nutrix could imbibe
11534-573: The South), sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods. American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , known as Webster's Dictionary ,
11692-528: The U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize , etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae , skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in
11850-570: The U.S. are for instance foothill , landslide (in all senses), backdrop , teenager , brainstorm , bandwagon , hitchhike , smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in British English). Some are euphemistic ( human resources , affirmative action , correctional facility ). Many compound nouns have
12008-676: The U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky . A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots . Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in
12166-530: The U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ( merger , downsize , bottom line ), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball . The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ( elevator [except in
12324-427: The U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet , eyeglasses , and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." Gotten ( past participle of get ) is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from
12482-597: The U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler ), baggage , hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket , originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English. Linguist Bert Vaux created
12640-538: The United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 21st-century British English has since lost. Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ ) in all environments, including in syllable-final position or before
12798-524: The United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States ; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around
12956-605: The West and Midwest, and New York Latino English , spoken in the New York metropolitan area . Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and " Yinglish " are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews , Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana , and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii , though primarily English-speaking,
13114-555: The accents spoken in the " Midland ": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum. Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds: In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since
13272-465: The adoption of the nobiliary particle. A symbolic inheritance." Just as his father had worked his way up from poverty into respectable society, Balzac considered toil and effort his real mark of nobility. When the July Revolution overthrew Charles X in 1830, Balzac declared himself a Legitimist , supporting King Charles' Royal House of Bourbon , but not without qualifications. He felt that
13430-505: The aeronautical sense ], gasoline ) as did certain automotive terms ( truck , trunk ). New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish ( chutzpah , schmooze, bupkis, glitch ) and German ( hamburger , wiener ). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7 ), while others have not ( have
13588-431: The ancient nature of this practice. Sometimes, the wet nurse came to live with the infant's family, filling a position between the monthly nurse (for the immediate post-partum period ) and the nanny . In some societies, the wet nurse was simply hired as any other employee. In others, however, she had a special relationship with the family, which could incur kinship rights. In Vietnamese family structure , for example,
13746-426: The author to write short stories, which Le Poitevin would then sell to publishers. Balzac quickly turned to longer works, and by 1826 he had written nine novels, all published under pseudonyms and often produced in collaboration with other writers. For example, the scandalous novel Vicaire des Ardennes (1822)—banned for its depiction of nearly-incestuous relations and, more egregiously, of a married priest—attributed to
13904-503: The bourgeois title character) are dynamic and complex. It is followed by La Duchesse de Langeais , arguably the most sublime of his novels. Le Père Goriot ( Old Father Goriot , 1835) was his next success, in which Balzac transposes the story of King Lear to 1820s Paris in order to rage at a society bereft of all love save the love of money. The centrality of a father in this novel matches Balzac's own position—not only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau, but also
14062-458: The businesses to a friend (who made them successful) but carried the debts for many years. As of April 1828 Balzac owed 50,000 francs to his mother. Balzac never lost his penchant for une bonne spéculation . It resurfaced painfully later when—as a renowned and busy author—he traveled to Sardinia in the hopes of reprocessing the slag from the Roman mines there. Near the end of his life Balzac
14220-408: The ceremony took a toll on both husband and wife: her feet were too swollen to walk, and he endured severe heart trouble. Although he married late in life, Balzac had already written two treatises on marriage: Physiologie du Mariage and Scènes de la Vie Conjugale . These works lacked firsthand knowledge; Saintsbury points out that "cœlebs cannot talk of [marriage] with much authority". In late April
14378-868: The chance to pursue their affections. A rival of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt , Balzac visited Countess Hańska in Saint Petersburg in 1843 and won her heart. After a series of financial setbacks, health problems and objections from Tsar Nicholas I , the couple finally received permission to wed. On 14 March 1850, with Balzac's health in serious decline, they travelled by carriage from her family seat at Verhivnya Park in Volhynia to St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Berdychiv (Russia's former banking city in present-day Ukraine), where they were married by Abbot Ożarowski. The ten-hour journey to and from
14536-464: The children they were taking care of. The emphasis on lactaction, which marks the hypersexualization of the aleksandrinstvo , was part of the rhetorical stigma surrounding this phenomenon in Slovenia. Sometimes, the infant was placed in the home of the wet nurse for several months, as was the case for Jane Austen and her siblings. The Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 91 , a receipt from AD 187, attests to
14694-465: The completion of this pair of books a significant accomplishment. Many of his novels were initially serialized, like those of Dickens . Their length was not predetermined. Illusions Perdues extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop, whereas La Fille aux yeux d'or ( The Girl with the Golden Eyes , 1835) opens with a broad panorama of Paris but becomes
14852-440: The confining and time-consuming chore of breastfeeding. A woman can only act as a wet nurse if she is lactating (producing milk). It was once believed that a wet nurse must have recently undergone childbirth in order to lactate. This is not necessarily the case, as regular breast stimulation can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion. Some women have been able to establish lactation using
15010-406: The country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r -dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from
15168-614: The diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased. Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages. Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in
15326-742: The double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here'). Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation. AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where
15484-418: The end, his health fails and he is consumed by his own confusion. Balzac meant the story to bear witness to the treacherous turns of life, its "serpentine motion". In 1833 Balzac released Eugénie Grandet , his first best-seller. The tale of a young lady who inherits her father's miserliness, it also became the most critically acclaimed book of his career. The writing is simple, yet the individuals (especially
15642-471: The fact that he had fathered a child, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay , with his otherwise-married lover, Maria Du Fresnay , who had been his source of inspiration for Eugénie Grandet . In 1836 Balzac took the helm of the Chronique de Paris , a weekly magazine of society and politics. He tried to enforce strict impartiality in its pages and a reasoned assessment of various ideologies. As Rogers notes, "Balzac
15800-513: The father of the naturalist novel . Zola indicated that whilst the Romantics saw the world through a colored lens, the naturalist sees through a clear glass—precisely the sort of effect Balzac attempted to achieve in his works. American English American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English , is the set of varieties of the English language native to
15958-470: The father of us all." An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office , but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as
16116-436: The five-act verse tragedy Cromwell . Although it pales by comparison with his later works, some critics consider it a good-quality text. When he finished, Balzac went to Villeparisis and read the entire work to his family; they were unimpressed. He followed this effort by starting (but never finishing) three novels: Sténie , Falthurne , and Corsino . In 1821 Balzac met the enterprising Auguste Le Poitevin , who convinced
16274-573: The flow of breast milk. By the 1500s, a wealthy mother who did not use a wet nurse was worthy of remark in India. The child was not "put out" of the household; rather, the wet nurse was included within it. The imperial wet nurses of the Mughal court were given honours in the Turco-Mongol tradition. Wet nursing used to be commonplace in the United Kingdom. Working-class women both provided and received wet-nursing services. Taking care of babies
16432-517: The following two centuries) when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. While non-rhoticity spread on
16590-520: The grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again.... I am hungry and nothing is offered to appease my appetite". He announced his intention to become a writer. The loss of this opportunity caused serious discord in the Balzac household, although Honoré was not turned away entirely. Instead, in April 1819 he was allowed to live in the French capital—as English critic George Saintsbury describes it—"in
16748-434: The headmaster to contact his family with news of a "sort of a coma". When he returned home, his grandmother said: " Voilà donc comme le collège nous renvoie les jolis que nous lui envoyons! " ("Look how the academy returns the pretty ones we send them!") Balzac himself attributed his condition to "intellectual congestion", but his extended confinement in the "alcove" was surely a factor. (Meanwhile, his father had been writing
16906-507: The hideous wrangling of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart grappling with the Penal Code". In 1819 Passez offered to make Balzac his successor, but his apprentice had had enough of the Law. He despaired of being "a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at
17064-944: The hospital , BrE to hospital ; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor , BrE the actress Elizabeth Taylor ). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects. Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , license for licence , catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling . Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to
17222-674: The influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants (known in the U.S. as the Scotch-Irish ) in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers. Any phonologically unmarked North American accent falls under an umbrella known as General American. This section mostly refers to such General American features. Studies on historical usage of English in both
17380-402: The inscription wr šdt nfrw nswt In , meaning Great Royal Wet Nurse In . In Asia, Lady Kasuga was the wet nurse of the third Tokugawa shōgun , Iemitsu . Lu Lingxuan was a lady in waiting who served as wet nurse to the emperor Gao Wei . She became exceedingly powerful during his reign and was often criticized by historians for her corruption and treachery. Chinese emperors honoured
17538-404: The language and grow up speaking Greek as fluently as Latin. The importance of the wet nurse to ancient Roman culture is indicated by the founding myth of Romulus and Remus , who were abandoned as infants but nursed by the she-wolf , as portrayed in the famous Capitoline Wolf bronze sculpture. The goddess Rumina was invoked among other birth and child development deities to promote
17696-438: The late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like car sound like cah or source like sauce . New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas,
17854-438: The life of their infant for the life of another." Wet nursing decreased in popularity during the mid-19th century, as medical journalists wrote about its previously undocumented dangers. Fildes argued that "Britain has been lumped together with the rest of Europe in any discussion of the qualities, terms of employment and conditions of the wet nurse, and particularly the abuses of which she was supposedly guilty." C. H. F. Routh,
18012-553: The lives of those around him—into La Comédie humaine . His time at Vendôme is reflected in Louis Lambert , his 1832 novel about a young boy studying at an Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme. The narrator says : "He devoured books of every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious works, history and literature, philosophy and physics. He had told me that he found indescribable delight in reading dictionaries for lack of other books." Balzac often fell ill, finally causing
18170-717: The low wages and high rent prices of this era, which forced many women to have to work soon after childbirth. This meant that many mothers had to send their infants away to be breastfed and cared for by wet nurses even poorer than themselves. With the high demand for wet nurses, the price to hire one increased as the standard of care decreased. This led to many infant deaths. In response, rather than nursing their own children, upper-class women turned to hiring wet nurses to come live with them instead. In entering into their employer's home to care for their charges, these wet nurses had to leave their own infants to be nursed and cared for by women far worse off than themselves, and who likely lived at
18328-522: The man of talent; a nation in mourning for a man of genius". The funeral was attended by "almost every writer in Paris", including Frédérick Lemaître , Gustave Courbet , Dumas père and Dumas fils , as well as representatives of the Légion d'honneur and other dignitaries. Later, a statue (called the Monument to Balzac ) was created by the celebrated French sculptor Auguste Rodin . Cast in bronze,
18486-427: The mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in
18644-489: The middle. Balzac revised obsessively, covering printer's proofs with changes and additions to be reset. He sometimes repeated this process during the publication of a book, causing significant expense both for himself and the publisher. As a result, the finished product quite often was different from the original text. Although some of his books never reached completion, some—such as Les employés ( The Government Clerks , 1841)—are nonetheless noted by critics. Although Balzac
18802-617: The most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents. Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English , which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans , has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture . Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English , spoken in
18960-636: The new July Monarchy (which claimed widespread popular support) was disorganized and unprincipled, in need of a mediator to keep the political peace between the King and insurgent forces. He called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate...." He planned to be such a candidate , appealing especially to the higher classes in Chinon . But after
19118-546: The newly-weds set off for Paris. His health deteriorated on the way, and Ewelina wrote to her daughter about Balzac being "in a state of extreme weakness" and "sweating profusely". They arrived in the French capital on 20 May, his fifty-first birthday. Five months after his wedding, on Sunday, 18 August 1850, Balzac died of gangrene associated with congestive heart failure , in the presence of his mother—his wife, Eve de Balzac (formerly Countess Hańska) had gone to bed. He had been visited that day by Victor Hugo, who later served as
19276-579: The novel, and without the habit he formed as a young man of writing under pressure, one can hardly imagine his producing La Comédie humaine ". Biographer Graham Robb suggests that as he discovered the Novel, Balzac discovered himself. During this time Balzac wrote two pamphlets in support of primogeniture and the Society of Jesus . The latter, regarding the Jesuits , illustrated his lifelong admiration for
19434-413: The number of children they had, as well as their breast shape, breast size, breast texture, nipple shape, and nipple size, since all these aspects were believed to affect the quality of a woman's milk. In 1874, the French government introduced a law named after Théophile Roussel [ fr ] , which "mandated that every infant placed with a paid guardian outside the parents' home be registered with
19592-454: The official records of homosexuals once maintained by the Paris police were finally released, his name was found listed. In February 1832 Balzac received an intriguing letter from Odessa —with no return address and signed simply " L'Étrangère " ("The Foreigner")—expressing sadness at the cynicism and atheism in La Peau de Chagrin and its negative portrayal of women. His response was to place
19750-417: The only person who was able to control him: "from my infancy until the time I grew up, only my wet nurse, because of her simple language, was able to make me grasp the idea that I was like other people." In Europe, Hodierna of St Albans was the mother of Alexander Neckam and wet nurse of Richard I of England , and Mrs. Pack was a wet nurse to William, Duke of Gloucester (1689–1700). Geneviève Poitrine
19908-402: The past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned / learnt , burned / burnt , snuck/sneaked , dove/dived ) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school ); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to
20066-470: The practice declined, replaced by maternal breastfeeding and bottle-feeding. Wet-nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV , the mid-17th century. By the 18th century, approximately 90% of infants were wet-nursed, mostly sent away to live with their wet nurses. In Paris, only 1,000 of the 21,000 babies born in 1780 were nursed by their own mothers. The high demand for wet nurses coincided with
20224-432: The practice of wet-nursing with them to North America. Since the arrangement of sending infants away to live with wet nurses was the cause of so many infant deaths, by the 19th century, Americans adopted the practice of having wet nurses live with the employers in order to nurse and care for their charges. This practice had the effect of increasing the death rate for wet nurses' own babies. Many employers would have only kept
20382-518: The professionals, who were well paid and respected. Upper-class women tended to hire wet nurses to work within their own homes, as part of a large household of servants. Wet nurses also worked at foundling hospitals , establishments for abandoned children . Their own children would likely be sent away, normally brought up by the bottle rather than being breastfed. Valerie Fildes, author of Breasts, Bottle and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding , argues that "In effect, wealthy parents frequently 'bought'
20540-509: The salaries of wet nurses there increased dramatically. Royal wet nurses are more likely than most to reach the historical record. In Ancient Egypt , Maia was the wet nurse of King Tutankhamun . Sitre In , the nurse of Hatshepsut , was not a member of the royal family but received the honour of a burial in the royal necropolis in the Valley of the Kings , in tomb KV60 . Her coffin has
20698-480: The same man, the slave-owner; see Children of the plantation .) Visual representations of wet-nursing practices in enslaved communities are most prevalent in representations of the Mammy archetype caricature. Images such as the one in this section represent both a historically accurate practice of enslaved black women wet-nursing their owner's white children, as well as sometimes an exaggerated racist caricaturization of
20856-454: The second he would not have been at home there.... [H]e felt it was his business not to frequent society but to create it". However, he often spent long periods at the Château de Saché , near Tours , the home of his friend Jean de Margonne, his mother's lover and father to her youngest child. Many of Balzac's tormented characters were conceived in the chateau's small second-floor bedroom. Today
21014-574: The sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast. For some Americans, the subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a UNICEF goodwill tour to Sierra Leone in 2008, American Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breastfeed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew. The sick one-week-old baby had been born the same day but a year later than Hayek's daughter, who had not yet been weaned. The actress later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great-grandmother spontaneously breastfeeding
21172-405: The state so that the French government is able to monitor how many children are placed with wet nurses and how many wet-nursed children have died". Wet nurses were hired to work in hospitals to nurse babies who were premature, ill, or abandoned. During the 18th and 19th centuries, congenital syphilis was a common cause of infant mortality. The Vaugirard hospital in Paris began to use mercury as
21330-406: The surname Balzac but added the aristocratic-sounding nobiliary particle to help him fit into respected society, a choice based on skill rather than by right. "The aristocracy and authority of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy of names and material power", he wrote in 1830. The timing of the decision was also significant; as Robb explained: "The disappearance of the father coincides with
21488-405: The time to nurse their own children, sending babies to wet nurses was still common among the middle and upper classes.) When the Balzac children returned home, they were kept at a frosty distance from their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. His 1835 novel Le Lys dans la vallée features a cruel governess named Miss Caroline, modeled after his own caregiver. At age ten Balzac
21646-570: The traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split . Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping , particularly in informal contexts. However, General American is also innovative in a number of its own ways: The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from
21804-417: The verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout , holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover , and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ( win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others). Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in
21962-483: The wet nurse is known as Nhũ mẫu , mẫu meaning "mother". Islam has a highly codified system of milk kinship known as rada . George III of the United Kingdom , born two months premature, had a wet nurse whom he so valued all his life, that her daughter was appointed laundress to the Royal Household, "a sinecure place of great emolument ". Mothers who nurse each other's babies are engaging in
22120-775: The word corn , used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S. Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812 , with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style ). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ( lot , waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin , adobe in
22278-517: The works of Molière . This business failed miserably, with many of the books "sold as waste paper". Balzac had better luck publishing the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantès , with whom he also had a love affair. Balzac borrowed money from his family and friends and tried to build a printing business, then a type foundry . His inexperience and lack of capital caused his ruin in these trades. He gave
22436-470: The world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century. The practice has made a small comeback in the 21st century. A wet nurse can help when a mother is unable or unwilling to breastfeed her baby. Before the development of infant formula in the 20th century, wet-nursing could save a baby's life. There are many reasons why a mother is unable to produce sufficient breast milk, or in some cases to lactate at all. For example, she may have
22594-609: The world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent . The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in
22752-432: Was "by turns a hermit and a vagrant", he managed to stay in tune with the social spheres which nourished his writing. He was friends with Théophile Gautier and Pierre-Marie-Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette , and he was acquainted with Victor Hugo . Nevertheless, he did not spend as much time in salons and clubs of Paris like many of his characters. "In the first place he was too busy", explains Saintsbury, "in
22910-449: Was a considerable factor in the match: she was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and François Balzac fifty. As the author and literary critic Sir Victor Pritchett explained, "She was certainly drily aware that she had been given to an old husband as a reward for his professional services to a friend of her family and that the capital was on her side. She was not in love with her husband". Honoré (named after Saint-Honoré of Amiens , who
23068-435: Was a well-paid, respectable, and popular job for many working-class women. In the 18th century, a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than an average man could as a labourer. Up until the 19th century, most wet-nursed infants were sent far from their families to live with their new caregiver for up to the first three years of their life. As many as 80% of wet-nursed babies who lived like this died during infancy. During
23226-554: Was a wet nurse of the Dauphin of France , Louis Joseph , son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette . Poitrine was accused of transmitting tuberculosis to the Dauphin and triggering his infant death when aged seven, although since very few pre-adolescent children die from TB, this accusation may have been the result of a misdiagnosis. Some non-royal wet nurses have also been written about. Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb
23384-458: Was captivated by the idea of cutting 20,000 acres (81 km) of oak wood in Ukraine and transporting it for sale in France. After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society". The moment the idea came to him, Balzac raced to his sister's apartment and proclaimed: "I am about to become
23542-412: Was considered unfashionable, in the sense that it not only prevented them from being able to wear the fashionable clothing of their time, but it was also thought to ruin their figures. Hiring a wet nurse was less expensive than having to hire someone else to help run the family business and/or take care of the family household duties in their place. Some women chose to hire wet nurses purely to escape from
23700-411: Was incorrectly believed that wet nurses could pass on personality traits to infants, such as acquired characteristics . Many cultures feature stories, historical or mythological, involving superhuman, supernatural, human, and in some instances, animal wet nurses . The Bible refers to Deborah , a nurse to Rebekah , wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob (Israel) and Esau , who appears to have lived as
23858-609: Was interested in any social, political, or economic theory, whether from the right or the left." The magazine failed, but in July 1840 he founded another publication, the Revue Parisienne . It produced three issues. These dismal business efforts—and his misadventures in Sardinia—provided an appropriate milieu in which to set the two-volume Illusions perdues ( Lost Illusions , 1843). The novel concerns Lucien de Rubempré,
24016-442: Was persuaded by his father to follow him into the Law; after a stint in the office of the avoué Jean-Baptiste Guillonnet-Merville for three years he trained and worked at the office of the notary Édouard-Victor Passez, a family friend. During this time Balzac began to understand the vagaries of human nature. In his 1840 novel Le Notaire , he wrote that a young person in the legal profession sees "the oily wheels of every fortune,
24174-447: Was pregnant with his child. In 1834, 8 months after the event, Maria Du Fresnay's daughter by Balzac, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, was born. This revelation from French journalist Roger Pierrot in 1955 confirmed what was already suspected by several historians: the dedicatee of the novel Eugénie Grandet , a certain "Maria", turns out to be Maria Du Fresnay herself. Balzac had also long been suspected of being attracted to males as well. When
24332-404: Was rarely consistent, wet nurses were stereotypically poor ladies from rural areas who offered their services for fees. Since there were no official records kept pertaining to wet nurses or wet-nursed babies, historians lack the knowledge of precisely how many infants were wet-nursed and for how long, whether they lived at home or elsewhere, and how many lived or died. The best source of evidence
24490-521: Was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme , where he studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of society, intentionally gave little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier schoolmates. Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning at the school. As
24648-479: Was the foster mother and wet nurse of the Islamic prophet Muhammad . Petronella Muns was, with her employer, the first Western woman to visit Japan. Naomi Baumslag, author of Milk, Money and Madness , described the legendary capacity of Judith Waterford : "In 1831, on her 81st birthday, she could still produce breast milk. In her prime she unfailingly produced two quarts (four pints or 1.9 litres) of breast milk
24806-516: Was the wet nurse of Aeneas . In Burmese mythology , Myaukhpet Shinma is the nat (spirit) representation of the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti . In Hawaiian mythology , Nuakea is a beneficent goddess of lactation; her name became the title for a royal wet nurse, according to David Malo . In ancient Rome , well-to-do households would have had wet nurses ( Latin nutrices , singular nutrix ) among their slaves and freedwomen, but some Roman women were wet nurses by profession, and
24964-469: Was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings. Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick / he ran quickly ; different use of some auxiliary verbs ; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns ; different preferences for
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