Speaker 1: Section three of the Awful German Language by Mark Twain.
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Speaker 1: Kirsten Webber Section three. However, it is not well to
Speaker 1: dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure
Speaker 1: to lose his temper early, and if he sticks to
Speaker 1: the subject and will not be warned, it will at
Speaker 1: last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns
Speaker 1: and adjectives are of fruitful nuisance in this language and
Speaker 1: should have been left out. For instance, the same sound
Speaker 1: Z means you, and it means she, and it means her,
Speaker 1: and it means it, and it means they, and it
Speaker 1: means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language
Speaker 1: which has to make one word do the work of six,
Speaker 1: and a poor little weak thing of only three letters
Speaker 1: at that. But mainly think of the exasperation of never
Speaker 1: knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.
Speaker 1: This explains why whenever a person says Z to me,
Speaker 1: I generally try to kill him if a stranger now
Speaker 1: observe the adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would
Speaker 1: have been an advantage. Therefore, for no other reason, the
Speaker 1: inventor of this language complicated it all he could. When
Speaker 1: we wish to speak of our good friend or friends
Speaker 1: in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form
Speaker 1: and have no trouble or hard feeling about it. But
Speaker 1: with the German tongue it is different. When a German
Speaker 1: gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it and
Speaker 1: keeps on declining it until common sense is all declined
Speaker 1: out of. It is as bad as Latin, he says.
Speaker 1: For instance, singular nominative mine gutel frendte my good friend,
Speaker 1: genitive minez guten frindez of my good friend, dative mine
Speaker 1: em guten frinte to my good friend, accusative mine en
Speaker 1: guten frente my good friend. Plural nominative mine guten friende
Speaker 1: my good friends, genitive minere guten freunde of my good friends,
Speaker 1: dative my nen guten frinden to my good friends, accusative
Speaker 1: mine gauten friende my good friends. Now let the candidate
Speaker 1: for the asylum try to memorize those variations and see
Speaker 1: how soon he will be elected. One might better go
Speaker 1: without friends in German than take all this trouble about them.
Speaker 1: I have shown what a bother it is to decline
Speaker 1: a good male friend. Well, this is only a third
Speaker 1: of the work, for there is a variety of new
Speaker 1: distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object
Speaker 1: is feminine, and still another when the object is newter.
Speaker 1: Now there are more adjectives in this language than there
Speaker 1: are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be
Speaker 1: as elaborately declined as the examples above suggest. Difficult troublesome,
Speaker 1: these words cannot describe it. I heard a Californian student
Speaker 1: in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that
Speaker 1: he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.
Speaker 1: The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure
Speaker 1: in complicating it in every way he could think. For instance,
Speaker 1: if one is casually referring to a house a house,
Speaker 1: or a horse felt or a dog hunt, he spells
Speaker 1: these words as I have indicated. But if he is
Speaker 1: referring to them in the dative case, he sticks on
Speaker 1: a foolish and unnecessary E and spells them how z
Speaker 1: fell d hunbu so as An added e often signifies
Speaker 1: the plural as the s does with us. The new
Speaker 1: student is likely to go on for a month making
Speaker 1: twins out of a dative dog before he discovers his mistake.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, many a new student who
Speaker 1: could ill a Ford loss has bought and paid for
Speaker 1: two dogs and only got one of them because he
Speaker 1: ignorantly bought that dog in the dative singular when he
Speaker 1: really supposed he was talking plural, which left the law
Speaker 1: on the seller's side. Of course, by the strict rules
Speaker 1: of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie.
Speaker 1: In German, all the nouns begin with a capital letter.
Speaker 1: Now that is a good idea, and a good idea
Speaker 1: in this language is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I
Speaker 1: consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea because by
Speaker 1: reason of it, you are almost always able to tell
Speaker 1: a noun the minute you see it. You fall into
Speaker 1: error occasionally because you mistake the name of a person
Speaker 1: for the name of a thing and waste a good
Speaker 1: deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it.
Speaker 1: German names almost always do mean something, and this helps
Speaker 1: to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day
Speaker 1: which said that quote the infuriated Tigris broke loose and
Speaker 1: utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest Tannenwald. When I
Speaker 1: was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found
Speaker 1: out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man's name.
Speaker 1: Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense
Speaker 1: or system in the distribution. So the gender of each
Speaker 1: must be learned separately and by heart. There is no
Speaker 1: other way to do this. One has to have a memory,
Speaker 1: like a memorandum book. In German, a young lady has
Speaker 1: no sex, while a turnip has. Think what over wrought
Speaker 1: reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect
Speaker 1: for the girl? See how it looks in print. I
Speaker 1: translate this from a conversation in one of the best
Speaker 1: German Sunday school books. Quote, Greetienne Villhem, where is the
Speaker 1: turnip villem She has gone to the kitchen, Greetien, Where
Speaker 1: is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden Vinhem? It has
Speaker 1: gone to the opera. End To continue with the German genders,
Speaker 1: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves
Speaker 1: are neuter. Horses are sexless, dogs are male, Cats are
Speaker 1: female tomcats included. Of course. A person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nail's, feet,
Speaker 1: and body are of the male sex, and his head
Speaker 1: is male or neuter, according to the word selected to
Speaker 1: signify it, and not according to the sex of the
Speaker 1: individual who wears it. For in Germany all the women
Speaker 1: wear either male heads or sexless ones. A person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands,
Speaker 1: and toes are of the female sex, and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart,
Speaker 1: and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of
Speaker 1: the language probably got what he knew about a conscience
Speaker 1: from hearsay. Now by the above dissection, the reader will
Speaker 1: see that in Germany a man may think he is
Speaker 1: a man, but when he comes to look into the
Speaker 1: matter more closely, he is bound to have his doubts.
Speaker 1: He finds that, in sober truth, he is a most
Speaker 1: ridiculous mixture. If he ends by trying to comfort himself
Speaker 1: with the thought that he can at least depend on
Speaker 1: a third of this mess as being manly and masculine,
Speaker 1: the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in
Speaker 1: this respect he is no better off than any woman.
Speaker 1: Or cow in the land. In the German, it is
Speaker 1: true that, by some oversight of the inventor of the language,
Speaker 1: a woman is female, but a wife vibe is not,
Speaker 1: which is unfortunate. A wife here has no sex, she
Speaker 1: is neuter. So according to the grammar, a fish is he,
Speaker 1: his scales are she, but a fish wife is neither.
Speaker 1: To describe a wife as sexless may be called under description.
Speaker 1: That is bad enough, but over description is surely worse.
Speaker 1: A German speaks of an Englishman as the englandah to
Speaker 1: change the sex, he adds in and that stands for
Speaker 1: english woman englendahl in. That seems descriptive enough, but still
Speaker 1: it is not exact enough for a German. So he
Speaker 1: precedes the word with that article, which indicates that the
Speaker 1: creature to follow is femminine, and writes it down thus
Speaker 1: quote d engleandelynn end quote, which means quote the she
Speaker 1: englishwoman end quote. I consider that that person is over described. Well.
Speaker 1: After the student has learned the sex of a great
Speaker 1: number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty because
Speaker 1: he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer
Speaker 1: to things as he and she and him and her,
Speaker 1: which it has always been accustomed to refer to as it.
Speaker 1: When he even frames a German sentence in his mind,
Speaker 1: with the hymns and hers in the right places, and
Speaker 1: then works up his courage to the utterance point, it
Speaker 1: is no use. The moment he begins to speak, his
Speaker 1: tongue flies the track, and all those labored males and
Speaker 1: females come out as it's. And even when he is
Speaker 1: reading German to himself, he always calls those things it,
Speaker 1: whereas he ought to read it this way. Tale of
Speaker 1: the Fishwife and its sad fate footnote two. I capitalize
Speaker 1: the nouns in the German and ancient English fashion. End
Speaker 1: of footnote two. It is a bleak day. Hear the
Speaker 1: rain how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles,
Speaker 1: And see the snow how he drifts along, and of
Speaker 1: the mud, how deep he is. Ah the poor fishwife.
Speaker 1: It is stuck fast in the mire. It has dropped
Speaker 1: its basket of fishes, and its hands have been cut
Speaker 1: by the scales as it seizes some of the falling creatures.
Speaker 1: And one scale has even gotten into its eye, and
Speaker 1: it cannot get her out. It opens its mouth to
Speaker 1: cry for help, But if any sound comes out of him,
Speaker 1: alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm.
Speaker 1: And now a tom cat has got one of the fishes,
Speaker 1: and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites
Speaker 1: off a fin, she holds her in her mouth. Will
Speaker 1: she swallow her? No? The fishwife's brave mother dog deserts
Speaker 1: his puppies and rescues the fin, which he eats himself
Speaker 1: as his reward. Oh horror, the lightning has struck the
Speaker 1: fish basket. He sets him on fire. See the flame.
Speaker 1: How she licks the doomed utensil with her red and
Speaker 1: angry tongue. Now she attacks the helpless fishwife's foot. She
Speaker 1: burns him up all but the big toe, and even
Speaker 1: she is partly consumed. And still she spreads. Still she
Speaker 1: waves her fiery tongues. She attacks the fishwife's leg and
Speaker 1: destroys it. She attacks its hand and destroys her. She
Speaker 1: attacks the fishwife's leg and destroys her. Also, she attacks
Speaker 1: its body and consumes him. She reads herself about its heart,
Speaker 1: and it is consumed. Next about its breast, and in
Speaker 1: a moment she is a cinder. Now she reaches its
Speaker 1: neck he goes now its chin, It goes now its nose.
Speaker 1: She goes in another moment, except help come, the fishwife
Speaker 1: will be no more time presses, Is there none to
Speaker 1: sucker and save? Yes? Joy, Joy, with flying feet, the
Speaker 1: she englishwoman comes, But alas the generous she female is
Speaker 1: too late. Where now is the fated fishwife? It has
Speaker 1: ceased from its sufferings, It has gone to a better land.
Speaker 1: All that is left of it for its loved ones
Speaker 1: to lament over is this poor smoldering ash heap, Ah,
Speaker 1: woful woeful ash heap. Let us take him up tenderly,
Speaker 1: reverently upon the lowly shovel, and bear him to his
Speaker 1: long rest, with the prayer that when he rises again,
Speaker 1: it will be a realm where he will have one good, square,
Speaker 1: responsible sex and have it all to himself, instead of
Speaker 1: having a mangy lot of assorted sexes scattered all over
Speaker 1: him in spots. There. Now the reader can see for
Speaker 1: himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing
Speaker 1: for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all languages,
Speaker 1: the similarities of look and sound between words which have
Speaker 1: no similarity in meaning, are a fruitful source of perplexity
Speaker 1: to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and
Speaker 1: it is notably the case in the German. Now there
Speaker 1: is that troublesome word famelt. To me, it has so
Speaker 1: close a resemblance, either real or fancied, to three or
Speaker 1: four other words, that I never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected,
Speaker 1: or married until I look in the dictionary, and then
Speaker 1: I find it means the latter. There are lots of
Speaker 1: such words, and they are a great torment to increase
Speaker 1: the difficulty. There are words which seem to resemble each
Speaker 1: other and yet do not, but they make just as
Speaker 1: much trouble as if they did. For instance, there is
Speaker 1: the word thahmetan to let, to lease, to hire, and
Speaker 1: the word phahiratten another way of saying to marry. I
Speaker 1: heard of an Englishman who knocked at a man's door
Speaker 1: in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best German he could command,
Speaker 1: to quote pha hiraten end quote that house. Then there
Speaker 1: are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize
Speaker 1: the first syllable, but mean something very different if you
Speaker 1: throw the emphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there
Speaker 1: is a word which means a runaway or the act
Speaker 1: of glancing through a book, according to the placing of
Speaker 1: the emphasis, and another word which signifies to associate with
Speaker 1: a man or to avoid him, according to where you
Speaker 1: put the emphasis, and you can generally depend on putting
Speaker 1: it in the wrong place and getting into trouble. End
Speaker 1: of Section three.