Mark Twain - The Awful German Language

By MarkTwain

Contents:

I.

II.

I went often tolook at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day Isurprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language.He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German wasvery rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.

If he had knownwhat it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it wouldbreak any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our Germanduring several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, ithad been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of ourteachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German canform no idea of what a perplexing language it is.

Surely there isnot another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery andelusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in themost helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule whichoffers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of theten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil makecareful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down andfinds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. Sooverboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand.Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I havegot one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, aseemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothedwith an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. Forinstance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiringafter things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where isthe bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- isthat the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Ofcourse no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, Ibegin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end,necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen(rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it istoo much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen,or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which genderit may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher itout on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rainis der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned,without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lyingaround, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitelylocated, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is oneof the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the raininto the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is notresting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- tointerfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, whichhas the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing demRegen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscopeof this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird isstaying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) denRegen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that wheneverthe word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws thatsubject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and thattherefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen desRegens."

N. B. -- I wasinformed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an "exception"which permits one to say "wegen den Regen" in certain peculiarand complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything butrain.

There are tenparts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a Germannewspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of acolumn; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, butmixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on thespot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compactedinto one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats offourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of itsown, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of theminor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses andreparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one ofwhich is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in themiddle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and youfind out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after theverb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writershovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," orwords to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closinghurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary,but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before thelooking-glass or stand on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- butI think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thingwhich must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.

Yet even theGerman books are not entirely free from attacks of the Parenthesis distemper --though they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and thereforewhen you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mindbecause you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. Now hereis a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel -- which a slightparenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw inthe parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader --though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and thereader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:

"But whenhe, upon the street, the(in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)government counselor's wife met," etc., etc. [1]

1.Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehllten jetzt sehrungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsrthin begegnet.

That is from TheOld Mamselle's Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that sentence is constructedupon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from thereader's base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verbaway over on the next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing alongthe exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in ahurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. Of course,then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state.

We have theParenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may see cases of it everyday in our books and newspapers: but with us it is the mark and sign of anunpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans it isdoubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sortof luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people. Forsurely it is not clearness -- it necessarily can't be clearness. Even ajury would have penetration enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be agood deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out tosay that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then right in themidst of this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makesthem stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. That ismanifestly absurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who secure yourinstant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with theforceps, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before theygive the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in badtaste.