Speaker 1: Section seven 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 seven. There are people in the world
Speaker 1: who will take a great deal of trouble to point
Speaker 1: out the faults in a religion or a language, and
Speaker 1: then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy.
Speaker 1: I am not that kind of person. I have shown
Speaker 1: that the German language needs reforming very well. I am
Speaker 1: ready to reform it. At least I am ready to
Speaker 1: make the proper suggestions. Such a course as this might
Speaker 1: be immodest in another. But I have devoted upward of
Speaker 1: nine full weeks first and last to a careful and
Speaker 1: critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a
Speaker 1: confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere
Speaker 1: superficial culture could have conferred upon me. In the first place,
Speaker 1: I would leave out the dative case. It confuses the plurals,
Speaker 1: And besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the
Speaker 1: date of case except he discover it by accident, and
Speaker 1: then he does not know when or where it was
Speaker 1: that he got into it, or how long he has
Speaker 1: been in it, or how he is ever going to
Speaker 1: get out of it again. The dative case is but
Speaker 1: an ornamental folly. It is better to discard it. In
Speaker 1: the next place, I would move the verb further up
Speaker 1: to the front. You may load up with ever so
Speaker 1: good a verb, but I notice that you never really
Speaker 1: bring down a subject with it at the present German range,
Speaker 1: you only cripple it. So I insist that this important
Speaker 1: part of speech should be brought forward to a position
Speaker 1: where it may be easily seen with the naked eye. Thirdly,
Speaker 1: I would import some strong words from the English tongue
Speaker 1: to swear with and also to use in describing all
Speaker 1: sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous way. Footnote four
Speaker 1: th Dumped and its variations and enlargements are words which
Speaker 1: have plenty of meaning, but the sounds are so mild
Speaker 1: and ineffectual that German ladies can use them without sin.
Speaker 1: German ladies who could not be induced to commit a
Speaker 1: sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip out one
Speaker 1: of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses
Speaker 1: or don't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked
Speaker 1: as our migracious German ladies are constantly saying, ah got mine,
Speaker 1: gott in himmel hal got der her Jesus, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They think our ladies have the same custom. Perhaps, for
Speaker 1: I once heard a gentle and lovely old German lady
Speaker 1: say to a sweet young American girl, the two languages
Speaker 1: are so alike. How pleasant that is? We say, ah
Speaker 1: got you say God damn. End of footnote four. Fourthly,
Speaker 1: I would reorganize the sexes and distribute them according to
Speaker 1: the will of the creator. This as a tribute of respect,
Speaker 1: if nothing else. Fifthly, I would do away with those great, long,
Speaker 1: compounded words, or require the speaker to deliver them in
Speaker 1: sections with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with
Speaker 1: them would be best, for ideas are more easily received
Speaker 1: and digested when they come out one at a time
Speaker 1: than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like
Speaker 1: any other. It is pleasanter and more beneficial to take
Speaker 1: it with a spoon than with a shovel. Sixthly, I
Speaker 1: would require a speaker to stop when he is done,
Speaker 1: and not hang a string of those useless hobbins, incubas
Speaker 1: and gahaptov bodensigns to the end of his oration. This
Speaker 1: sort of gigaws undignifies a speech instead of adding a grace.
Speaker 1: They are therefore an offense and should be discarded. Seventhly,
Speaker 1: I would discard the parenthesis, also the reparenthesis, the re reparenthesis,
Speaker 1: and the re re re re re re reparenthesis, and
Speaker 1: likewise the final wide reaching all enclosing k parentheses. I
Speaker 1: would require every individual, be he high or low, to
Speaker 1: unfold a plain straightforward tale, or else coil it and
Speaker 1: sit on it and hold his peace. In fractions of
Speaker 1: this law should be punishable with death. And eighthly, and last,
Speaker 1: I would retain Souk and schlock with their pendants, and
Speaker 1: discard the rest of the vocabulary. This would simplify the language.
Speaker 1: I have now named what I regard as the most
Speaker 1: necessary and important changes. These are perhaps all I could
Speaker 1: be expected to name for nothing, But there are other
Speaker 1: suggestions which I can and will make in case my
Speaker 1: proposed application shall result in my being formally employed by
Speaker 1: the government in the work of reforming the language. My
Speaker 1: philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought
Speaker 1: to learn English, barring spelling and pronouncing in thirty hours
Speaker 1: French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It
Speaker 1: seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be
Speaker 1: trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as
Speaker 1: it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set
Speaker 1: aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have
Speaker 1: time to learn it. End of Section seven.