Section one of The Awful German Language by Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Kirsten Webber. The Awful German Language by Mark Twain, Section one. A little learning makes the whole world Kin Proverbs thirty two seven. I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of
it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested, and after I had talked awhile, he said my German was very rare, possibly a unique, and wanted to add it to his museum. If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any
collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is. Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it,
hither and thither in the most helpless way. And when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions. He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard 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 have got one of these four confusing cases where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird. It is always inquiring after things which are of no sort
of consequence to anybody, where is the bird? Now? The answer to this question, according to the book is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course, no bird would do that. But then you must stick to the book very well. I begin 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, lagan rain is masculine, or maybe it is feminine, or possibly neuter. It is
too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either dea the Lagan, or d the Lagan, or thus the Lagan, according to which gender it may turn out to be. When I look, in the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well, then the rain is dea reagan if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned without enlargement or discussion nominative case. But if this rain is lying around in a kind of general way on the ground,
it is then definitely located. It is doing something that is resting, which is one of the German Grammar's ideas of doing something. And this throws the rain into the dative case and makes it deem Reagan. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively. It is falling to interfere with the bird, likely and this indicates movement which has the effect of sliding it into the accusative case and changing diem Reagan into Dean Reagan. Completed
the grammatical horoscope of this matter. I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in
the blacksmith shop Vagan on account of Deanlagan. Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word Vagan drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the genitive case, regardless of consequences, and therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop Vagan desslagans n B. I was informed later by a higher authority that there was an exception which permits one to say Vagan Dean Reagan in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but
that this exception is not extended to anything but rain. End of Section one