Mérimée’s dictation is perceived as the most difficult in the French language. To the point that Napoleon III made 75 mistakes. Grab your pens!
Believe it or not, there was a time when we had fun by… Doing dictations! Today, exercise has become feared and few people enjoy it. In any case, at the time of the Second Empire, the Court liked to test its spelling. According to legend, Empress Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III, then asked Prosper Mérimée to write a particularly difficult text in order to test the knowledge of those around him.
The author complied, and what is today called Mérimée’s dictation was created in 1857. It bears the nickname “the most difficult dictation” in the French language, even in the world. When they played the game, members of the elite of the time had an impressive number of mistakes: Napoleon III would have made 75, Eugénie 62, the writers Alexandre Dumas fils and Octave Feuillet 24 and 19. One person however, stood out: Prince Metternich, Austrian ambassador, who achieved the feat of only making three. If you want to measure yourself against them, here is a video where the text is dictated by Bernard Pivot and the answer key is just below.
Here is the correction to Mérimée’s dictation:
“To speak unequivocally, this dinner at Sainte-Adresse, near Le Havre, despite the balmy scents of the sea, despite the very good wines, the veal legs and the venison legs lavished by the amphitryon, was a real washer.
Whatever the deposits which the dowager and the churchwarden were supposed to have given, and however small they may have seemed, compared to the sum due, it was infamous to blame these poorly built twin riflemen for that. , and to inflict a beating on them, while they were only thinking of having refreshments with their co-religionists.
Whatever the case, it was quite wrong that the dowager, through an exorbitant misinterpretation, allowed herself to be led to take a rake and that she thought she was obliged to hit the demanding churchwarden on his aged shoulder blade. . Two cells were broken; dysentery broke out followed by phthisis, and the unfortunate man’s imbecility increased.
– By Saint Martin! what a hemorrhage! cried this jackass.
At this event, grabbing his bottle brush, ridiculous excess baggage, he pursued her throughout the entire church.