A little learning makes the whole world kin. Proverbs XXXII, 7 I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in HeidelbergCastle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spokeentirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talkeda while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted toadd it to his museum. If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would alsohave known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I hadbeen hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, andalthough we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under greatdifficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what aperplexing language it is. Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod andsystemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about init, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinkshe has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid thegeneral rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the pageand reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." Heruns his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule thaninstances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat andfind 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 ammaster of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into mysentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles theground 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 consequenceto anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question --according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shopon account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you muststick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for thatanswer. 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 -- orpossibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it iseither DER (the) Regen, or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according towhich 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 beingMENTIONED, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if thisrain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is thendefinitely located, it is DOING SOMETHING -- that is, RESTING (which is oneof the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the raininto the Dative case, and makes it DEM Regen. However, this rain is notresting, but is doing something ACTIVELY, -- it is falling -- to interferewith the bird, likely -- and this indicates MOVEMENT, which has the effectof sliding it into the Accusative case and changing DEM Regen into DENRegen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answerup confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in theblacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen." Then the teacher lets mesoftly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into asentence, it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case, regardlessof 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 peculiarand complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended toanything BUT rain. There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An averagesentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; itoccupies 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 wordsconstructed 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, eachenclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses,making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses aremassed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placedin the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle ofthe last line of it -- AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for thefirst time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merelyby way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "HABENSIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or words to that effect, and themonument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature ofthe flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German booksare easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or standon your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that tolearn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must alwaysremain an impossibility to a foreigner. Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of theParenthesis distemper -- though they are usually so mild as to cover only afew lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carriessome meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal ofwhat has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellentGerman novel -- which a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectlyliteral translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens forthe assistance of the reader -- though in the original there are noparenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through tothe 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) governmentcounselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1] 1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehuellten jetzsehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet. That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt. And thatsentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe howfar that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a Germannewspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have heardthat sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries andparentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to presswithout getting to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left in avery exhausted and ignorant state. We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may seecases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is themark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas withthe Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of thepresence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands forclearness among these people. For surely it is NOT clearness -- itnecessarily can't be clearness. Even a jury would have penetration enough todiscover that. A writer's ideas must be a good deal confused, a good dealout of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met acounselor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this sosimple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand stilluntil he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. That is manifestlyabsurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant andbreathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with the forceps, andthen stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before they give thedreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste. The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make bysplitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of anexciting chapter and the OTHER HALF at the end of it. Can any one conceiveof anything more confusing than that? These things are called "separableverbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; andthe wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better theauthor of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one isREISTE AB -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from anovel and reduced to English: "The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother andsisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who,dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds ofher rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale fromthe terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her pooraching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearlythan life itself, PARTED." However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. Oneis sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and willnot 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, andit means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to makeone word do the work of six -- and a poor little weak thing of only threeletters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowingwhich 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 astranger. Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would havebeen an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of thislanguage complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our "goodfriend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form andhave no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German tongue it isdifferent. When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, andkeeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it. Itis 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 inGermany than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother itis 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 learnedwhen 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 inSwitzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examplesabove suggested. Difficult? -- troublesome? -- these words cannot describeit. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmestmoods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective. The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure incomplicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one iscasually referring to a house, HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND, hespells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them inthe Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary E and spells themHAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE. So, as an added E often signifies the plural, as the Sdoes with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twinsout 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 twodogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in theDative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural -- which leftthe law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, andtherefore a suit for recovery could not lie. In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is agood idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuousfrom 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 minuteyou see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the nameof a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying todig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, andthis helps to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day, whichsaid that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up theunfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins todoubt 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 thedistribution; 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 amemorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callousdisrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this froma 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 arefemale, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats arefemale -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom,elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head ismale or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and NOTaccording to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany allthe 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 consciencefrom hearsay. Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a manmay THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, heis bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a mostridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with thethought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manlyand masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him thatin 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 thelanguage, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which isunfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to thegrammar, a fish is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither. Todescribe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is badenough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of anEnglishman as the ENGLAENDER; to change the sex, he adds INN, and thatstands for Englishwoman -- ENGLAENDERINN. That seems descriptive enough, butstill it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with thatarticle which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writesit down thus: "die Englaenderinn," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." Iconsider 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 histongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which ithas been always accustomed to refer to it as "it." When he even frames aGerman sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, andthen works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use -- the momenthe begins to speak his tongue files the track and all those labored malesand females come out as "its." And even when he is reading German tohimself, he always calls those things "it," where as he ought to read inthis 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 herattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep heis! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped itsBasket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seizedsome of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye. andit cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Soundcomes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now aTomcat 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 struckthe Fish-basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks thedoomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she attacks the helplessFishwife's Foot -- she burns him up, all but the big Toe, and even SHE ispartly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues;she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys IT; she attacks its Hand anddestroys HER also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys HER also; sheattacks its Body and consumes HIM; she wreathes herself about its Heart andIT is consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder; nowshe 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 flyingFeet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the generous she-Female is toolate: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, ithas gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for its loved Ones tolament 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 himto his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be aRealm where he will have one good square responsible Sex, and have it all tohimself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all overhim in Spots. There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun businessis a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in alllanguages the similarities of look and sound between words which have nosimilarity 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 thereis 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 knowwhether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until I look inthe dictionary, and then I find it means the latter. There are lots of suchwords and they are a great torment. To increase the difficulty there arewords which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not; but they make justas 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 ofsaying to marry). I heard of an Englishman who knocked at a man's door inHeidelberg and proposed, in the best German he could command, to"verheirathen" that house. Then there are some words which mean one thingwhen you emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very different ifyou throw the emphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there is a wordwhich means a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book, according tothe placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies to ASSOCIATEwith a man, or to AVOID him, according to where you put the emphasis -- andyou can generally depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting intotrouble. There are some exceedingly useful words in this language. SCHLAG, forexample; and ZUG. There are three-quarters of a column of SCHLAGS in thedictonary, 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. Thisis its simple and EXACT meaning -- that is to say, its restricted, itsfettered meaning; but there are ways by which you can set it free, so thatit can soar away, as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. Youcan hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you wantto. You can begin with SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery, and you can hang onthe whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet toSCHLAG-WASSER, which means bilge-water -- and including SCHLAG-MUTTER, whichmeans 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 beendiscovered yet. One cannot overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG. Armed justwith these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot the foreigner on German soilaccomplish? The German word ALSO is the equivalent of the English phrase"You know," and does not mean anything at all -- in TALK, though itsometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his mouth an ALSO fallsout; and every time he shuts it he bites one in two that was trying to GETout. Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, is master ofthe situation. Let him talk right along, fearlessly; let him pour hisindifferent German forth, and when he lacks for a word, let him heave aSCHLAG into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug, butif it doesn't let him promptly heave a ZUG after it; the two together canhardly fail to bung the hole; but if, by a miracle, they SHOULD fail, lethim simply say ALSO! and this will give him a moment's chance to think ofthe needful word. In Germany, when you load your conversational gun it isalways best to throw in a SCHLAG or two and a ZUG or two, because it doesn'tmake any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter, you arebound to bag something with THEM. Then you blandly say ALSO, and load upagain. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to aGerman or an English conversation as to scatter it full of "Also's" or "Youknows." In my note-book I find this entry: July 1. -- In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables wassuccessfully removed from a patient -- a North German from near Hamburg; butas most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, underthe impression that he contained a panorama, he died. The sad event has casta gloom over the whole community. That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the mostcurious and notable features of my subject -- the length of German words.Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe theseexamples: Freundschaftsbezeigungen. Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. Stadtverordnetenversammlungen. These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And theyare not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and see themmarching majestically across the page -- and if he has any imagination hecan see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill tothe meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. WheneverI come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way Ihave made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchangewith other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here raresome specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of abankrupt bric-a-brac hunter: Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. Alterthumswissenschaften. Kinderbewahrungsanstalten. Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen. Wiedererstellungbestrebungen. Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen. Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretchingacross 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 itblocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnelthrough it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no helpthere. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere -- so it leaves this sortof words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardlylegitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor ofthem ought to have been killed. They are compound words with the hyphensleft out. The various words used in building them are in the dictionary, butin a very scattered condition; so you can hunt the materials out, one byone, and get at the meaning at last, but it is a tedious and harassingbusiness. I have tried this process upon some of the above examples."Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendshipdemonstrations," which isonly a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations of friendship.""Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems to be "Independencedeclarations," whichis 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 -- amere rhythmical, gushy euphuism for "meetings of the legislature," I judge.We used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but ithas 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 hadhappened. In those days we were not content to embalm the thing and bury itdecently, we wanted to build a monument over it. But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to thepresent day, but with the hyphens left out, in the German fashion. This isthe shape it takes: instead of saying "Mr. Simmons, clerk of the county anddistrict courts, was in town yesterday," the new form put it thus: "Clerk ofthe County and District Courts Simmons was in town yesterday." This savesneither time nor ink, and has an awkward sound besides. One often sees aremark like this in our papers: "MRS. Assistant District Attorney Johnsonreturned to her city residence yesterday for the season." That is a case ofreally unjustifiable compounding; because it not only saves no time ortrouble, but confers a title on Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to. Butthese little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous anddismal German system of piling jumbled compounds together. I wish to submitthe following local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration: "In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock Night, theinthistownstandingtavern called 'The Wagoner' was downburnt. When the fireto the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork's Nest reached, flew the parentStorks away. But when the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest ITSELF caughtFire, straightway plunged the quickreturning Mother-Stork into the Flamesand died, her Wings over her young ones outspread." Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to take the pathosout of that picture -- indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. This itemis dated away back yonder months ago. I could have used it sooner, but I waswaiting to hear from the Father-stork. I am still waiting. "ALSO!" If I had not shown that the German is a difficult language, Ihave at least intended to do so. I have heard of an American student who wasasked 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 levelmonths, 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 infuriatingstudy, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard lately ofa worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certain Germanword 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 tohis lacerated spirit. This was the word DAMIT. It was only the SOUND thathelped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that theemphasis 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 episodemust be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of thischaracter have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their Germanequivalents 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 andmagnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. But theirGerman 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 superiorusefulness in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a battle whichwas called by so tame a term as a SCHLACHT? Or would not a comsumptive feeltoo much bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and aseal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word GEWITTER was employed todescribe? And observe the strongest of the several German equivalents forexplosion -- AUSBRUCH. Our word Toothbrush is more powerful than that. Itseems to me that the Germans could do worse than import it into theirlanguage to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. The Germanword for hell -- Hoelle -- sounds more like HELLY than anything else;therefore, how necessary chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If aman were told in German to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity offeeling insulted? Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, Inow come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. Thecapitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far before thisvirtue stands another -- that of spelling a word according to the sound ofit. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how anyGerman word is pronounced without having to ask; whereas in our language ifa student should inquire of us, "What does B, O, W, spell?" we should beobliged to reply, "Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off byitself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out whatit signifies -- whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod ofone's head, or the forward end of a boat." There are some German words which are singularly and powerfullyeffective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, andaffectionate 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 softestand loveliest aspects -- with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers,the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winternights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, respose,and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels offairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, isthe language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs whichcan make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the SOUND of thewords is correct -- it interprets the meanings with truth and withexactness; 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 theright one. they repeat it several times, if they choose. That is wise. Butin English, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, weimagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchangeit for some other word which only approximates exactness, to escape what wewrongly fancy is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surelyinexactness is worse. There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble topoint out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly abouttheir 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 readyto reform it. At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions. Such acourse as this might be immodest in another; but I have devoted upward ofnine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of thistongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it whichno mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me. In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case. It confuses theplurals; 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 whereit was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he isgoing 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. Youmay load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you never reallybring down a subject with it at the present German range -- you only crippleit. So I insist that this important part of speech should be brought forwardto a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye. Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue -- toswear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous things in avigorous ways. [4] 4. "Verdammt," and its variations and enlargements, are words whichhave plenty of meaning, but the SOUNDS are so mild and ineffectual thatGerman ladies can use them without sin. German ladies who could not beinduced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip outone of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses or don'tlike the soup. It sounds about as wicked as our "My gracious." German ladiesare constantly saying, "Ach! Gott!" "Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "HerrGott" "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 sweetyoung American girl: "The two languages are so alike -- how pleasant thatis; we say 'Ach! Gott!' you say 'Goddamn.'" Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute themaccordingly to the will of the creator. This as a tribute of respect, ifnothing else. Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; orrequire the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions forrefreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are moreeasily received and digested when they come one at a time than when theycome in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and morebeneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and nothang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben gewordenseins" 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 bediscarded. Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis, there-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewise thefinal wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. I would require everyindividual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale, orelse coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. Infractions of this lawshould be punishable with death. And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG, with theirpendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. This would simplify thelanguage. I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and importantchanges. These are perhaps all I could be expected to name for nothing; butthere are other suggestions which I can and will make in case my proposedapplication shall result in my being formally employed by the government inthe work of reforming the language. My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought tolearn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French inthirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that thelatter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain asit is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the deadlanguages, for only the dead have time to learn it. A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION IN THE GERMAN TONGUE, DELIVERED AT A BANQUETOF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CLUB OF STUDENTS BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this old wonderland, thisvast garden of Germany, my English tongue has so often proved a uselesspiece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a countrywhere they haven't the checking system for luggage, that I finally set towork, 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 einoccasion 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 ichresolved to tackle this business in the German language, um Gottes willen!Also! Sie muessen so freundlich sein, und verzeih mich die interlarding vonein oder zwei Englischer Worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass die deutscheis not a very copious language, and so when you've really got anything tosay, you've got to draw on a language that can stand the strain. Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde ich ihmspaeter dasselbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst verlangen wollen habenwerden sollen sein haette. (I don't know what wollen haben werden sollensein haette means, but I notice they always put it at the end of a Germansentence -- merely for general literary gorgeousness, I suppose.) This is a great and justly honored day -- a day which is worthy of theveneration in which it is held by the true patriots of all climes andnationalities -- a day which offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech;und meinem Freunde -- no, meinEN FreundEN -- meinES FreundES -- well, takeyour 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 hisParadise Lost -- ich -- ich -- that is to say -- ich -- but let us changecars. Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer hierzusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome and inspiritingspectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can the terse German tongue rise tothe expression of this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten?Nein, o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce themarrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting and produceddiese Anblick -- eine Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen -- gut fuer die Augenin a foreign land and a far country -- eine Anblick solche als in diegew:ohnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein "schoenes Aussicht!" Ja,freilich natuerlich wahrscheinlich ebensowohl! Also! Die Aussicht auf demKoenigsstuhl 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 onelocality, but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands that knowliberty today, and love it. Hundert Jahre vorueber, waren die Englaender unddie Amerikaner Feinde; aber heut sind sie herzlichen Freunde, Gott sei Dank!May this good-fellowship endure; may these banners here blended in amity soremain; may they never any more wave over opposing hosts, or be stained withblood which was kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred, until aline drawn upon a map shall be able to say: "THIS bars the ancestral bloodfrom flowing in the veins of the descendant!" Популярность:
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