University of Virginia Library

4445. LANGUAGE (Italian), French, Spanish and.—

I fear the learning of Italian
will confound your French and Spanish. Being
all of them degenerated dialects of the Latin,
they are apt to mix in conversation. I have
never seen a person speaking the three languages,
who did not mix them. It is a delightful
language, but late events having rendered
the Spanish more useful, lay it aside to prosecute
that.—
To Peter Carr. Washington ed. ii, 237. Ford ed., iv, 428.
(P. 1787)