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A little learning makes the
whole world kin. —Proverbs xxxii, 7.
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg
Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I
spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and
after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly
a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also
have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I
had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that
time, and although we had made good progress, it had been
accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our
teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied
German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and
systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed
about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when
at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to
take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of
speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make
careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his eye down and
finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of
it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find
another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my
experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four
confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant
preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful
and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For
instance, my book inquires after a certain bird—(it is always
inquiring after things which are of no sort of no consequence to
anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this
question—according to the book—is that the bird is waiting in the
blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do
that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to
cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end,
necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "REGEN
(rain) is masculine—or maybe it is feminine—or possibly neuter—it is
too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either DER (the)
Regen, or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which
gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of
science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is
masculine. Very well—then THE rain is DER Regen, if it is simply in
the quiescent state of being MENTIONED, without enlargement or
discussion—Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a
kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located,
it is DOING SOMETHING—that is, RESTING (which is one of the German
grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into
the Dative case, and makes it DEM Regen. However, this rain is not
resting, but is doing something ACTIVELY,—it is falling—to interfere
with the bird, likely—and this indicates MOVEMENT, which has the
effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing DEM Regen
into DEN Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this
matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is
staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen."
Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever
the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it ALWAYS throws that
subject into the GENITIVE case, regardless of consequences—and
therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens."
N.B.—I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an
"exception" which permits one to say "wegen DEN Regen" in certain
peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not
extended to anything BUT rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An
average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive
curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the
ten parts of speech—not in regular order, but mixed; it is built
mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and
not to be found in any dictionary—six or seven words compacted into
one, without joint or seam—that is, without hyphens; it treats of
fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a
parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses,
making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and
reparentheses are massed together between a couple of
king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the
majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of
it—AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for the first time
what the man has been talking about; and after the verb—merely by
way of ornament, as far as I can make out—the writer shovels in "HABEN
SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or words to that effect,
and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is
in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature—not necessary,
but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them
before the looking-glass or stand on your head—so as to reverse the
construction—but I think that to learn to read and understand a
German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an
impossibility to a foreigner.
Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of the
Parenthesis distemper—though they are usually so mild as to cover
only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the
verb it carries some meaning to your mind because you are able to
remember a good deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence
from a popular and excellent German novel—which a slight parenthesis
in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the
parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the
reader—though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or
hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote
verb the best way he can:
"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)
government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1]
1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehuellten
jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten
Regierungsrathin begegnet.
That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that
sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You
observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations;
well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the
next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the
exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get
in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at
all. Of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and
ignorant state.
We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may
see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us
it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy
intellect, whereas with the Germans it is doubtless the mark and
sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous
intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people. For
surely it is NOT clearness—it necessarily can't be clearness. Even a
jury would have penetration enough to discover that. A writer's
ideas must be a good deal confused, a good deal out of line and
sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's
wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this so simple
undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand
still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. That is
manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who secure
your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on
it with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through a
tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in
literature and dentistry are in bad taste.
The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by
splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of
an exciting chapter and the OTHER HALF at the end of it. Can any one
conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are
called "separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over
with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them
are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with
his performance. A favorite one is REISTE AB—which means departed.
Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to
English:
"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and
sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen,
who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the
ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the
stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past
evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon
the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself,
PARTED."
However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs.
One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the
subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his
brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful
nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For
instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it
means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and it means THEM.
Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word
do the work of six—and a poor little weak thing of only three
letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never
knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.
This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, I generally try
to kill him, if a stranger.
Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would
have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor
of this language complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak
of our "good friend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick
to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but
with the German tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands
on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the
common sense is all declined out of it. It is as bad as Latin. He
says, for instance:
SINGULAR
Nominative -- Mein guter
Freund, my good friend.
Genitives -- Meines guten Freundes, of my good friend.
Dative -- Meinem guten Freund, to my good friend.
Accusative -- Meinen guten Freund, my good friend.
PLURAL
N. -- Meine guten Freunde, my
good friends.
G. -- Meiner guten Freunde, of my good friends.
D. -- Meinen guten Freunden, to my good friends.
A. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.
Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those
variations, and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go
without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them. I
have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well
this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new
distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is
feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. Now there are
more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in
Switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the
examples above suggested. Difficult?—troublesome?—these words cannot
describe it. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one
of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than
one German adjective.
The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in
complicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one
is casually referring to a house, HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog,
HUND, he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is
referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and
unnecessary E and spells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE. So, as an added
E often signifies the plural, as the S does with us, the new student
is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a Dative dog
before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new
student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs
and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in
the Dative singular when he really supposed he was talking
plural—which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the
strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not
lie.
In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a
good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily
conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of
nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always
able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error
occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name
of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning
out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this
helps to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day, which
said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the
unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins
to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a
man's name.
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the
distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and
by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory
like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a
turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the
turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks
in print—I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of
the German Sunday-school books:
"Gretchen: Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
"Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen.
"Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
"Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera."
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are
female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male,
cats are female—tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck,
bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex,
and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to
signify it, and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears
it—for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a
person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the
female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and
conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language
probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a
man may THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter
closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober
truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to
comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a
third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating
second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no
better off than any woman or cow in the land.
In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of
the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not—which is
unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according
to the grammar, a fish is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is
neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called
under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is
surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the ENGLAENDER; to
change the sex, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman—ENGLAENDERINN.
That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for
a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates
that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus:
"die Englaenderinn,"—which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider
that that person is over-described.
Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of
nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible
to persuade his tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and
"him" and "her," which it has been always accustomed to refer to it
as "it." When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the
hims and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to
the utterance-point, it is no use—the moment he begins to speak his
tongue files the track and all those labored males and females come
out as "its." And even when he is reading German to himself, he
always calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this
way:
TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]
2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and ancient English)
fashion.
It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he
rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how
deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it
has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the
Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has
even got into its Eye. and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth
to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is
drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of
the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a
Fin, she holds her in her Mouth—will she swallow her? No, the
Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the
Fin—which he eats, himself, as his Reward. O, horror, the Lightning
has struck the Fish-basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how
she licks the doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she
attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot—she burns him up, all but the
big Toe, and even SHE is partly consumed; and still she spreads,
still she waves her fiery Tongues; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg
and destroys IT; she attacks its Hand and destroys HER also; she
attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys HER also; she attacks its
Body and consumes HIM; she wreathes herself about its Heart and IT
is consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder;
now she reaches its Neck—He goes; now its Chin—IT goes; now its
Nose—SHE goes. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife
will be no more. Time presses—is there none to succor and save? Yes!
Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the
generous she-Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It
has ceased from its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all
that is left of it for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor
smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up
tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his
long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be a
Realm where he will have one good square responsible Sex, and have
it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes
scattered all over him in Spots.
There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun
business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I
suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound
between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful
source of perplexity to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and
it is notably the case in the German. Now there is that troublesome
word VERMAEHLT: to me it has so close a resemblance—either real or
fancied—to three or four other words, that I never know whether it
means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until I look in the
dictionary, and then I find it means the latter. There are lots of
such words and they are a great torment. To increase the difficulty
there are words which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not;
but they make just as much trouble as if they did. For instance,
there is the word VERMIETHEN (to let, to lease, to hire); and the
word VERHEIRATHEN (another way of saying to marry). I heard of an
Englishman who knocked at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed,
in the best German he could command, to "verheirathen" that house.
Then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize
the first syllable, but mean something very different if you throw
the emphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there is a word
which means a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book,
according to the placing of the emphasis; and another word which
signifies to ASSOCIATE with a man, or to AVOID him, according to
where you put the emphasis—and you can generally depend on putting
it in the wrong place and getting into trouble.
There are some exceedingly useful words in this language. SCHLAG,
for example; and ZUG. There are three-quarters of a column of
SCHLAGS in the dictonary, and a column and a half of ZUGS. The word
SCHLAG means Blow, Stroke, Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar,
Coin, Stamp, Kind, Sort, Manner, Way, Apoplexy, Wood-cutting,
Enclosure, Field, Forest-clearing. This is its simple and EXACT
meaning—that is to say, its 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 to. You can begin with SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery, and you
can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the
alphabet to SCHLAG-WASSER, which means bilge-water—and including
SCHLAG-MUTTER, which means mother-in-law.
Just the same with ZUG. Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, Tug,
Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition,
Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of
Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff,
Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing
which it does NOT mean—when all its legitimate pennants have been
hung on, has not been discovered yet.
One cannot overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG. Armed just
with these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot the foreigner on
German soil accomplish? The German word ALSO 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 an ALSO 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 SCHLAG into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it
like a plug, but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a ZUG after
it; the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if, by a
miracle, they SHOULD fail, let him simply say ALSO! 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 SCHLAG or two and a ZUG 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 ALSO, 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 "Also's" or "You knows."
In my note-book I find this entry:
July 1.—In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was
successfully removed from a patient—a North German from near
Hamburg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in
the wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama,
he died. The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community.
That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the
most curious and notable features of my subject—the length of German
words. Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.
Observe these examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And
they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and
see them marching majestically across the page—and if he has any
imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They
impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great
interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I
stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a
valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other
collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here rare
some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the
effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these
grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it
adorns and ennobles that literary landscape—but at the same time it
is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he
cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel through it. So he
resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. The
dictionary must draw the line somewhere—so it leaves this sort of
words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly
legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the
inventor of them ought to have been killed. They are compound words
with the hyphens left out. The various words used in building them
are in the dictionary, but in a very scattered condition; so you can
hunt the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning at last,
but it is a tedious and harassing business. I have tried this
process upon some of the above examples. "Freundshaftsbezeigungen"
seems to be "Friendship demonstrations," which is only a foolish and
clumsy way of saying "demonstrations of friendship." "Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen"
seems to be "Independencedeclarations," which is no improvement upon
"Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see. "Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen"
seems to be "General-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I
can get at it—a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for "meetings of
the legislature," I judge. We used to have a good deal of this sort
of crime in our literature, but it has gone out now. We used to
speak of a things as a "never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead
of cramping it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and
then going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened. In
those days we were not content to embalm the thing and bury it
decently, we wanted to build a monument over it.
But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to
the present day, but with the hyphens left out, in the German
fashion. This is the shape it takes: instead of saying "Mr. Simmons,
clerk of the county and district courts, was in town yesterday," the
new form put it thus: "Clerk of the County and District Courts
Simmons was in town yesterday." This saves neither time nor ink, and
has an awkward sound besides. One often sees a remark like this in
our papers: "MRS. Assistant District Attorney Johnson returned to
her city residence yesterday for the season." That is a case of
really unjustifiable compounding; because it not only saves no time
or trouble, but confers a title on Mrs. Johnson which she has no
right to. But these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted
with the ponderous and dismal German system of piling jumbled
compounds together. I wish to submit the following local item, from
a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration:
"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock Night, the
inthistownstandingtavern called 'The Wagoner' was downburnt. When
the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork's Nest reached,
flew the parent Storks away. But when the bytheraging,
firesurrounded Nest ITSELF caught Fire, straightway plunged the
quickreturning Mother-Stork into the Flames and died, her Wings over
her young ones outspread."
Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to take the
pathos out of that picture—indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen
it. This item is dated away back yonder months ago. I could have
used it sooner, but I was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. I
am still waiting.
"ALSO!" If I had not shown that the German is a difficult language,
I have at least intended to do so. I have heard of an American
student who was asked how he was getting along with his German, and
who answered promptly: "I am not getting along at all. I have worked
at it hard for three level months, and all I have got to show for it
is one solitary German phrase—'ZWEI GLAS'" (two glasses of beer). He
paused for a moment, reflectively; then added with feeling: "But
I've got that SOLID!"
And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and
infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my
intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely tried American student
who used to fly to a certain German word for relief when he could
bear up under his aggravations no longer—the only word whose sound
was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated
spirit. This was the word DAMIT. It was only the SOUND that helped
him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that the
emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support
was gone, and he faded away and died.
3. It merely means, in its general sense, "herewith."
I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode
must be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of
this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their
German equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. Boom,
burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl,
cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. These are magnificent words;
the have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which
they describe. But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to
sing the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears were
made for display and not for superior usefulness in analyzing
sounds. Would any man want to die in a battle which was called by so
tame a term as a SCHLACHT? Or would not a comsumptive feel too much
bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a
seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word GEWITTER was
employed to describe? And observe the strongest of the several
German equivalents for explosion—AUSBRUCH. Our word Toothbrush is
more powerful than that. It seems to me that the Germans could do
worse than import it into their language to describe particularly
tremendous explosions with. The German word for hell—Hoelle—sounds
more like HELLY than anything else; therefore, how necessary
chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told in
German to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling
insulted?
Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, I
now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues.
The capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far
before this virtue stands another—that of spelling a word according
to the sound of it. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the
student can tell how any German word is pronounced without having to
ask; whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us,
"What does B, O, W, spell?" we should be obliged to reply, "Nobody
can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; you can only
tell by referring to the context and finding out what it
signifies—whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of
one's head, or the forward end of a boat."
There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully
effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and
affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all
forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the
passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with
outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects—with meadows
and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of
summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word,
those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace;
those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland;
and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the
language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs
which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the
SOUND of the words is correct—it interprets the meanings with truth
and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear,
the heart.
The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the
right one. They repeat it several times, if they choose. That is
wise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in
a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are
weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only
approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater
blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble
to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go
blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not
that kind of person. I have shown that the German language needs
reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it. At least I am ready
to make the proper suggestions. Such a course as this might be
immodest in another; but I have devoted upward of nine full weeks,
first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and
thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no
mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me.
In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case. It confuses
the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the
Dative case, except he discover it by accident—and then he does not
know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has
been in it, or how he is going to get out of it again. The Dative
case is but an ornamental folly—it is better to discard it.
In the next place, I would move the Verb further up to the front.
You may load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you
never really bring down a subject with it at the present German
range—you only cripple it. So I insist that this important part of
speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be
easily seen with the naked eye.
Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue—to
swear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous
things in a vigorous ways. [4]
4. "Verdammt," and its variations and enlargements, are words which
have plenty of meaning, but the SOUNDS are so mild and ineffectual
that German ladies can use them without sin. German ladies who could
not be induced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion,
promptly rip out one of these harmless little words when they tear
their dresses or don't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked as
our "My gracious." German ladies are constantly saying, "Ach! Gott!"
"Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Herr Gott" "Der Herr Jesus!" etc.
They think our ladies have the same custom, perhaps; for I once
heard a gentle and lovely old German lady say to a sweet young
American girl: "The two languages are so alike—how pleasant that is;
we say 'Ach! Gott!' you say 'Goddamn.'"
Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute them
accordingly to the will of the creator. This as a tribute of
respect, if nothing else.
Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or
require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions
for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for
ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a
time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any
other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon
than with a shovel.
Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not
hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben
geworden seins" to the end of his oration. This sort of gewgaws
undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. They are, therefore,
an offense, and should be discarded.
Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis,
the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and
likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. I
would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain
straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his
peace. Infractions of this law should be punishable with death.
And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG, with their
pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. This would
simplify the language.
I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and important
changes. These are perhaps all I could be expected to name for
nothing; but there are other suggestions which I can and will make
in case my proposed application shall result in my being formally
employed by the government in the work of reforming the language.
My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought
to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours,
French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems
manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and
repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and
reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead
have time to learn it.
A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION IN THE GERMAN TONGUE, DELIVERED AT A
BANQUET OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CLUB OF STUDENTS BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS
BOOK
Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this old wonderland,
this vast garden of Germany, my English tongue has so often proved a
useless piece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to carry around,
in a country where they haven't the checking system for luggage,
that I finally set to work, and learned the German language. Also!
Es freut mich dass dies so ist, denn es muss, in ein hauptsaechlich
degree, hoeflich sein, dass man auf ein occasion like this, sein
Rede in die Sprache des Landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll.
Dafuer habe ich, aus reinische Verlegenheit—no, Vergangenheit—no, I
mean Hoflichkeit—aus reinishe Hoflichkeit habe ich resolved to
tackle this business in the German language, um Gottes willen! Also!
Sie muessen so freundlich sein, und verzeih mich die interlarding
von ein oder zwei Englischer Worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass
die deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when you've
really got anything to say, you've got to draw on a language that
can stand the strain.
Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde ich ihm
spaeter dasselbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst verlangen wollen
haben werden sollen sein haette. (I don't know what wollen haben
werden sollen sein haette means, but I notice they always put it at
the end of a German sentence—merely for general literary
gorgeousness, I suppose.)
This is a great and justly honored day—a day which is worthy of the
veneration in which it is held by the true patriots of all climes
and nationalities—a day which offers a fruitful theme for thought
and speech; und meinem Freunde—no, meinEN FreundEN—meinES FreundES—well,
take your choice, they're all the same price; I don't know which one
is right—also! ich habe gehabt haben worden gewesen sein, as Goethe
says in his Paradise Lost—ich—ich—that is to say—ich—but let us
change cars.
Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer
hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome
and inspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can the
terse German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is it
Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten?
Nein, o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce
the marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting
and produced diese Anblick—eine Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen—gut
fuer die Augen in a foreign land and a far country—eine Anblick
solche als in die gewoehnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein "schoenes
Aussicht!" Ja, freilich natuerlich wahrscheinlich ebensowohl! Also!
Die Aussicht auf dem Koenigsstuhl mehr groesser ist, aber
geistlische sprechend nicht so schoen, lob' Gott! Because sie sind
hier zusammengetroffen, in Bruderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu
feirn, whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality,
but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands that know
liberty today, and love it. Hundert Jahre vorueber, waren die
Englaender und die Amerikaner Feinde; aber heut sind sie herzlichen
Freunde, Gott sei Dank! May this good-fellowship endure; may these
banners here blended in amity so remain; may they never any more
wave over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which was
kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred, until a line drawn
upon a map shall be able to say: "THIS bars the ancestral blood from
flowing in the veins of the descendant!" |
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