03 - Awful German Language - Section 03 by Mark Twain

should have been left out. For instance, the same sound Z means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six, and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.

This explains why whenever a person says Z to me, I generally try to kill him if a stranger now observe the adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage. Therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our good friend or friends in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it. But

with the German tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it and keeps on declining it until common sense is all declined out of. It is as bad as Latin, he says. For instance, singular nominative mine gutel frendte my good friend, genitive minez guten frindez of my good friend, dative mine em guten frinte to my good friend, accusative mine en

guten frente my good friend. Plural nominative mine guten friende my good friends, genitive minere guten freunde of my good friends, dative my nen guten frinden to my good friends, accusative mine gauten friende my good friends. Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go without friends in German than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother it is to decline

a good male friend. Well, this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is newter. Now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examples above suggest. Difficult troublesome,

these words cannot describe it. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective. The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think. For instance, if one is casually referring to a house a house, or a horse felt or a dog hunt, he spells

these words as I have indicated. But if he is referring to them in the dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary E and spells them how z fell d hunbu so as An added e often signifies the plural as the s does with us. The new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a dative dog before he discovers his mistake.

And on the other hand, many a new student who could ill a Ford loss has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them because he ignorantly bought that dog in the dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural, which left the law on the seller's side. Of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie. In German, all the nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a good idea, and a good idea

in this language is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea because by reason of it, you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps

to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day which said that quote the infuriated Tigris broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest Tannenwald. When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man's name. Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution. So the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way to do this. One has to have a memory,

like a memorandum book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what over wrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl? See how it looks in print. I translate this from a conversation in one of the best German Sunday school books. Quote, Greetienne Villhem, where is the turnip villem She has gone to the kitchen, Greetien, Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden Vinhem? It has

gone to the opera. End To continue with the German genders, a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter. Horses are sexless, dogs are male, Cats are female tomcats included. Of course. A person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nail's, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter, according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it. For in Germany all the women

wear either male heads or sexless ones. A person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex, and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay. Now by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter more closely, he is bound to have his doubts.

He finds that, in sober truth, he is a most ridiculous mixture. If he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman. Or cow in the land. In the German, it is true that, by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a woman is female, but a wife vibe is not,

which is unfortunate. A wife here has no sex, she is neuter. So according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fish wife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under description. That is bad enough, but over description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the englandah to change the sex, he adds in and that stands for english woman englendahl in. That seems descriptive enough, but still

it is not exact enough for a German. So he precedes the word with that article, which indicates that the creature to follow is femminine, and writes it down thus quote d engleandelynn end quote, which means quote the she englishwoman end quote. I consider that that person is over described. Well.

After the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as he and she and him and her, which it has always been accustomed to refer to as it. When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the hymns and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance point, it

is no use. The moment he begins to speak, his tongue flies the track, and all those labored males and females come out as it's. And even when he is reading German to himself, he always calls those things it, whereas he ought to read it this way. Tale of the Fishwife and its sad fate footnote two. I capitalize the nouns in the German and ancient English fashion. End

of footnote two. It is a bleak day. Hear the rain how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles, And see the snow how he drifts along, and of the mud, how deep he is. Ah the poor fishwife. It is stuck fast in the mire. It has dropped its basket of fishes, and its hands have been cut by the scales as it seizes some of the falling creatures. And one scale has even gotten into its eye, and

it cannot get her out. It opens its mouth to cry for help, But if any sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm. And now a tom cat has got one of the fishes, and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a fin, she holds her in her mouth. Will she swallow her? No? The fishwife's brave mother dog deserts his puppies and rescues the fin, which he eats himself as his reward. Oh horror, the lightning has struck the fish basket. He sets him on fire. See the flame.

How she licks the doomed utensil with her red and angry tongue. Now she attacks the helpless fishwife's foot. She burns him up all but the big toe, and even she is partly consumed. And still she spreads. Still she waves her fiery tongues. She attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys it. She attacks its hand and destroys her. She attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys her. Also, she attacks its body and consumes him. She reads herself about its heart,

and it is consumed. Next about its breast, and in a moment she is a cinder. Now she reaches its neck he goes now its chin, It goes now its nose. She goes in another moment, except help come, the fishwife will be no more time presses, Is there none to sucker and save? Yes? Joy, Joy, with flying feet, the she englishwoman comes, But alas the generous she female is too late. Where now is the fated fishwife? It has ceased from its sufferings, It has gone to a better land.

All that is left of it for its loved ones to lament over is this poor smoldering ash heap, Ah, woful woeful ash heap. Let us take him up tenderly, reverently upon the lowly shovel, and bear him to his long rest, with the prayer that when he rises again, it will be a realm where he will have one good, square, responsible sex and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted sexes scattered all over

him in spots. There. Now the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all languages, the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning, are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in the German. Now there

is that troublesome word famelt. To me, it has so close a resemblance, either real or fancied, to three or four other words, that I never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means the latter. There are lots of such words, and they are a great torment to increase the difficulty. There are words which seem to resemble each other and yet do not, but they make just as

much trouble as if they did. For instance, there is the word thahmetan to let, to lease, to hire, and the word phahiratten another way of saying to marry. I heard of an Englishman who knocked at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best German he could command, to quote pha hiraten end quote that house. Then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very different if you

throw the emphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there is a word which means a runaway or the act of glancing through a book, according to the placing of the emphasis, and another word which signifies to associate with a man or to avoid him, according to where you put the emphasis, and you can generally depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble. End of Section three.