Section four of the Awful German Language by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Kirsten Weber. Section four. There are some exceedingly useful words in this language, schlog, for example, and suk. There are three quarters of a column of schlocks in the dictionary, and a column and a half of zuks. The word schlock means blow, stroke, dash, hit, shock, clap, slap, time, bar, coin, stamp, kind, sort, manner, way, apoplexy,
wood cutting, and closure field forest clearing. This is its simple and exact meaning, that is to say, it's restricted, its fettered meaning. But there are ways by which you can set it free, so that it can soar away as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please to
its tail and make it mean anything you want. You can begin with schlock adah, which means artery, and you can hang on the whole dictionary word by word, clear through the alphabet, to schlack vassal, which means bilge water, and including schlock mutta, which means mother in law, just
the same with tsuk. Strictly speaking, zuk means pull, tug, draft, procession, march, progress, flight, direction, expedition, train, caravan, passage, stroke, touch line, flourish, trait of character, feature, lineament, chess, move, organ stop, team with bias, draar, propensity, inhalation, disposition. But that thing which it does not mean when all its legitimate penants have been hung on, has not been, to say covered yet one cannot overestimate the usefulness of schlock
and tsuk. Armed just with these two and the word alzo, what cannot the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word alzo is the equivalent of the English phrase you know, and does not mean anything at all in talk, though it sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his mouth and azol falls out, and every time he shuts it, he bites one in two that was trying to get out. Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three
noble words, is master of the situation. Let him talk right along, fearlessly, let him pour his indifferent German forth, And when he lacks for a word, let him heave a schlock into the vacuum. All the chances are that it fits in like a plug. But if it doesn't, let him promptly heave a zuk after it. The two together can hardly fail to bung the whole. But if by a miracle they should fail, let him simply say alzo, and this will give him a moment's chance to think
of the needful word. In Germany, when you load your conversational gun, it is always best to throw in a schlock or two and a zuk or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter. You are bound to bag something with them. Then you blandly say alzo and load up again. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to a German or an English conversation as to scatter it full of alzo's or you know's. End of Section four