Speaker 1: Section one of The Awful German Language by Mark Twain.
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Speaker 1: German Language by Mark Twain, Section one. A little learning
Speaker 1: makes the whole world Kin Proverbs thirty two seven. I
Speaker 1: went often to look at the collection of curiosities in
Speaker 1: Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of
Speaker 1: it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language.
Speaker 1: He was greatly interested, and after I had talked awhile,
Speaker 1: he said my German was very rare, possibly a unique,
Speaker 1: and wanted to add it to his museum. If he
Speaker 1: had known what it had cost me to acquire my art,
Speaker 1: he would also have known that it would break any
Speaker 1: collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard
Speaker 1: at work on our German during several weeks at that time,
Speaker 1: and although we had made good progress, it had been
Speaker 1: accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our
Speaker 1: teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has
Speaker 1: not studied German can form no idea of what a
Speaker 1: perplexing language it is. Surely there is not another language
Speaker 1: that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and
Speaker 1: elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it,
Speaker 1: hither and thither in the most helpless way. And when
Speaker 1: at last he thinks he has captured a rule which
Speaker 1: offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the
Speaker 1: general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech,
Speaker 1: he turns over the page and reads, let the pupil
Speaker 1: make careful note of the following exceptions. He runs his
Speaker 1: eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to
Speaker 1: the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes
Speaker 1: again to hunt for another ararat and find another Quicksand
Speaker 1: such has been and continues to be my experience. Every
Speaker 1: time I think I have got one of these four
Speaker 1: confusing cases where I am master of it, a seemingly
Speaker 1: insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an
Speaker 1: awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me.
Speaker 1: For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird. It
Speaker 1: is always inquiring after things which are of no sort
Speaker 1: of consequence to anybody, where is the bird? Now? The
Speaker 1: answer to this question, according to the book is that
Speaker 1: the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account
Speaker 1: of the rain. Of course, no bird would do that.
Speaker 1: But then you must stick to the book very well.
Speaker 1: I begin to cipher out the German for that answer,
Speaker 1: I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is
Speaker 1: the German idea. I say to myself, lagan rain is masculine,
Speaker 1: or maybe it is feminine, or possibly neuter. It is
Speaker 1: too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either
Speaker 1: dea the Lagan, or d the Lagan, or thus the Lagan,
Speaker 1: according to which gender it may turn out to be.
Speaker 1: When I look, in the interest of science, I will
Speaker 1: cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine.
Speaker 1: Very well, then the rain is dea reagan if it
Speaker 1: is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned without
Speaker 1: enlargement or discussion nominative case. But if this rain is
Speaker 1: lying around in a kind of general way on the ground,
Speaker 1: it is then definitely located. It is doing something that
Speaker 1: is resting, which is one of the German Grammar's ideas
Speaker 1: of doing something. And this throws the rain into the
Speaker 1: dative case and makes it deem Reagan. However, this rain
Speaker 1: is not resting, but is doing something actively. It is
Speaker 1: falling to interfere with the bird, likely and this indicates
Speaker 1: movement which has the effect of sliding it into the
Speaker 1: accusative case and changing diem Reagan into Dean Reagan. Completed
Speaker 1: the grammatical horoscope of this matter. I answer up confidently
Speaker 1: and state in German that the bird is staying in
Speaker 1: the blacksmith shop Vagan on account of Deanlagan. Then the
Speaker 1: teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever
Speaker 1: the word Vagan drops into a sentence, it always throws
Speaker 1: that subject into the genitive case, regardless of consequences, and
Speaker 1: therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop Vagan desslagans
Speaker 1: n B. I was informed later by a higher authority
Speaker 1: that there was an exception which permits one to say
Speaker 1: Vagan Dean Reagan in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but
Speaker 1: that this exception is not extended to anything but rain.
Speaker 1: End of Section one