Frederick
Voltaire
Voltaire and Frederick the Great were friends and conversed in French, as all European aristocrats did at the time. And they were witty.
One day, Frederick invited Voltaire to come join him at his castle, Sanssouci, in Potsdam, by writing the following note:
_p__ à _ci__
venez sans
Voltaire did not miss a beat and replied with his own note:
G a
And they both began to look forward to their next meeting!
Solution:
Voltaire immediately understood Frederick’s note to mean “venez souper à Sanssouci“–ie, come dine at Sanssouci. The word venez is “sous” (under) the letter p. The word sans is “sous” the word ci.
So he replied by saying J’ai grand appétit: Capital G = “Gé grand”; lower-case a = “a petit”.
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
OMG, that’s funny! I wonder if Voltaire went so far as to LOL. I think I’m out of my depth, again. I’m going to go back to watching cat videos on youtube. (no, I’ve never texted, either). Sarcasm is not only a low form of humor, it is also a manifestation of one’s insecurity.
I only just read your comment now, Mr Crotchety–I was busy watching dog videos on YouTube…
LOL
venir D esprits!
1
Un souvenir grand d’esprit.
😉
(Right?)
Hmmm, let me try this again. Sorry, I’m experimenting with HTML on your blog.
Maybe this will be better:
venir DDD esprits
1
Thanks for humoring me. So close to what I meant. I’m trying for: Un souvenir des grands esprits!
stood
____
I
😉
I think Voltaire also said, in his reply
p
_
A
Since he had grand appetit it would have to be à grand souper 🙂
PS LOL in French is sometimes shown as “mdr” – mourir de rire, but I think most French speakers go for LOL these days…..
Thanks for playing, David.
Good to learn the French web-argot…. from an Englishman. 😉
I have seen it like:
P/1 a 6/100
Un soous P a cent sous six….?
Oh, that’s even better, Henning! That must be the true version.
brilliant!
So far no one has it right, or at least as I learned it in high school in Nebraska from a German exchange student named Gisele Budde. (Are you out there, Gisele?)
The version first given here is too easy on the right side of the equation. The — I would guess — correct version of that side is (either):
si çi
100 making it bi-lingual…or. 100
No charge for this
Dick Cavett
It came out wrong. Different from how I typed it. Perhaps the damage can be cured with:
the top of the right side (the numerator?) should be EITHER ‘si’ or ‘çi’
D. Cavett
Very plausible, Dick:
so it would be: ci / 100
Thanks!
Maybe Frederick and Voltaire did variations on this. I got it years ago from my erudite, French speaking father-in-law as venez diner with ve above and di below ve with a large nose in front of both of them, followed by a ci over sans and below all that from Voltaire a large J followed by a small a for J’ai grand appetit.
Oh, I like the nez version!