A constructive use of time – learning German, pt 4

Time for another instalment in this extremely unpopular series!

Not only does it document ever-more desperate attempts to justify to an uncaring universe my lack of progress in achieving a personal goal, but – even worse – but this time I have also managed to force in yet another black and white photograph of a man with a big moustache.

As if you don't already know, this particular old moustachioed man is none other than Mark Twain – the inventor of Huckleberry Hound and writer of Martin Lawrence's career-high hit "Black Knight".

Anyway, back in the 1870s and 1880s, old Twainy was a kind of globe-trotting Michael Palin figure and at one point he wrote a book called "A Tramp Abroad" about a rather half-hearted attempt to walk across Germany, Switzerland and the top bit of Italy. Yes, I got it for free on my Kindle off of the internet. 

The book is quite amusing and has lots of pictures in it (download the version with illustrations!) – consisting as it does in large part of the narrator declaring that he will do various excitingly German things - fight a duel, climb an Alp etc – and then worming his way out of actually doing it.

Appendix D of the book, however, is entitled "The Awful German Language" and in this, Twain elaborates on some of the enormous difficulties he had in learning it.  

Bits of it are hilarious and so, in the true spirit of the internet, I repeat extracts from it here for your amusement – on the understanding that I am doing something of real value (ie not ripping it off) in "curating" other people's work as my own.

"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."

HA HA – true dat, Mark Twain!

Later, he goes to town on the whole noun-gender thing, which I have mercifully as yet avoided by using the Michel Thomas teaching method – which largely omits nouns altogether.

"In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife 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 Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. 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 Engländerinn," -- which means 'the she-Englishwoman.' 

"I consider that that person is over-described."

Then, pointing out the seemingly endless possible meanings of the words "Schlag" and "Zug" and the meaningless but ubiquitous word "also":

"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'."

This is all very good advice as far as I can see.