Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn still holds a supremely important place in American literature.

No less than Ernest Hemingway said of it: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn’.  It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

The antebellum adventures of the adolescent Huck and his friend Jim, the runaway slave, seem almost timeless, even though Twain’s book was published in 1884.

One bit of conversation seems relevant to any American trying to master a foreign language.

Huck has just told Jim that people in France use a different language and, in his heavy accent, Jim raises quite sensible questions about French while in discussion with Huck.

To wit:

Jim: “Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?”

Huck: “No, Jim, you couldn’t understand a word they said — not a single word.”

Jim: “Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?”

Huck: “I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy — what would you think?”

Jim: ” I wouldn’ think nuff’n; I’d take en bust him over de head …”

Huck: “Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?”

Jim: “Well, den, why couldn’t he SAY it?”

Huck: “Why, he IS a-saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s way of saying it.”

Jim: Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ’bout it. Dey ain’t no sense in it.”

It brings to mind Steve Martin‘s comic complaint about the French: “They have a different word for everything!”

Except Jim said it a century earlier.