Speaker 1: Section four of the Awful German Language by Mark Twain.
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Speaker 1: Kirsten Weber. Section four. There are some exceedingly useful words
Speaker 1: in this language, schlog, for example, and suk. There are
Speaker 1: three quarters of a column of schlocks in the dictionary,
Speaker 1: and a column and a half of zuks. The word
Speaker 1: schlock means blow, stroke, dash, hit, shock, clap, slap, time, bar, coin, stamp, kind, sort, manner, way, apoplexy,
Speaker 1: wood cutting, and closure field forest clearing. This is its
Speaker 1: simple and exact meaning, that is to say, it's restricted,
Speaker 1: its fettered meaning. But there are ways by which you
Speaker 1: can set it free, so that it can soar away
Speaker 1: as on the wings of the morning, and never be
Speaker 1: at rest. You can hang any word you please to
Speaker 1: its tail and make it mean anything you want. You
Speaker 1: can begin with schlock adah, which means artery, and you
Speaker 1: can hang on the whole dictionary word by word, clear
Speaker 1: through the alphabet, to schlack vassal, which means bilge water,
Speaker 1: and including schlock mutta, which means mother in law, just
Speaker 1: the same with tsuk. Strictly speaking, zuk means pull, tug, draft, procession, march, progress, flight, direction, expedition, train, caravan, passage, stroke,
Speaker 1: touch line, flourish, trait of character, feature, lineament, chess, move,
Speaker 1: organ stop, team with bias, draar, propensity, inhalation, disposition. But
Speaker 1: that thing which it does not mean when all its
Speaker 1: legitimate penants have been hung on, has not been, to
Speaker 1: say covered yet one cannot overestimate the usefulness of schlock
Speaker 1: and tsuk. Armed just with these two and the word alzo,
Speaker 1: what cannot the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German
Speaker 1: word alzo is the equivalent of the English phrase you know,
Speaker 1: and does not mean anything at all in talk, though
Speaker 1: it sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens
Speaker 1: his mouth and azol falls out, and every time he
Speaker 1: shuts it, he bites one in two that was trying
Speaker 1: to get out. Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three
Speaker 1: noble words, is master of the situation. Let him talk
Speaker 1: right along, fearlessly, let him pour his indifferent German forth,
Speaker 1: And when he lacks for a word, let him heave
Speaker 1: a schlock into the vacuum. All the chances are that
Speaker 1: it fits in like a plug. But if it doesn't,
Speaker 1: let him promptly heave a zuk after it. The two
Speaker 1: together can hardly fail to bung the whole. But if
Speaker 1: by a miracle they should fail, let him simply say alzo,
Speaker 1: and this will give him a moment's chance to think
Speaker 1: of the needful word. In Germany, when you load your
Speaker 1: conversational gun, it is always best to throw in a
Speaker 1: schlock or two and a zuk or two, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the
Speaker 1: charge may scatter. You are bound to bag something with them.
Speaker 1: Then you blandly say alzo and load up again. Nothing
Speaker 1: gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint
Speaker 1: to a German or an English conversation as to scatter
Speaker 1: it full of alzo's or you know's. End of Section
Speaker 1: four