The terrible German language

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Bilingual edition from 1996

The terrible German language ( English original title: The Awful German Language ) or the horrors of the German language is a short humorous - satirical essay by the US writer Mark Twain from 1880. The English original was first published in the anthology A Tramp Abroad as Annex D published. Twain, who was on a journey of several months through Europe at the time, describes what he felt was the bizarre , absurdities , contradictions and general difficulties of learning German as a foreign language .

The first German translation appeared in 1891 in Volume 6 Bummel durch Europa of the Twain work edition " Travel pictures and various sketches" . The essay was also published separately in numerous editions in Germany and is better known than the book in which it appeared.

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View of Heidelberg Castle , Heidelberg and the Neckar Valley (the Church of the Holy Spirit almost in the middle , the Old Bridge on the right )

The humorous-satirical character of the essay can already be seen in the quote that Twain placed in front of his text: A little learning makes the whole world kin , where he cited Proverbs xxxii, 7 as its source . In German texts this is translated as a little education makes the whole world related or learning a little from each other makes the whole world related . Proverbs Salomonis XXXII, 7 is given as the source . The supposed quotation from the Old Testament does not exist, however, because the book of Proverbs only contains 31 chapters - not 32.

Then Twain begins with an anecdote. He often visited the collection of rarities in Heidelberg Castle and once surprised the curator with his German. He then informed him that he thought it was unique and that he would like to exhibit it in his museum. However, Twain notes that this purchase would bankrupt anyone as Twain had taken a lot of effort to learn the language.

criticism

Twain's 1892 travel pictures containing the text

Twain begins his criticism of the German language by stating that there is no other language that is as disorganized and unsystematic as German. For example, there are usually more exceptions to a rule than examples of it. The use of the four German cases is a great challenge for Twain. In addition, an average sentence in a German newspaper is far too long. He deals with many different topics at the same time, all of which are included in their own parentheses . It is particularly annoying that the verb is usually at the end. Parenteses also appeared in German books, but not to the same extent as in newspapers. As an example Twain called the beginning of a sentence from the novel The Mystery of the old maid of E. Marlitt . Twain admits that such exaggerated parentheses also exist in English-language literature and the press, but there they are a sign of poor quality. In German, however, according to Twain, they are a sign of a “practiced pen”. Separable verbs also provoke Twain's criticism. As an example, he gives the English translation of a German sentence with the phrase “traveled from”, which he translates as “departed”. He separates the word into “de-” for the beginning and “-parted” for the end of the sentence.

Twain also considers personal pronouns and adjectives in German to be a “rampant plague” (“fruitful nuisance”) that should have been left out. The word “she” stands for the English words “you”, “she”, “her”, “it”, “they” and “them”, which provokes bitterness because you never know the exact meaning. Twain also finds the declension of adjectives as bad as in Latin . As an example, he gives the English phrase “my good friend (s)” in the four German cases as well as their German equivalents and states that in Germany it is better to get along without friends before learning all these variations by heart. He also criticizes the dative-e because it can easily be confused with the plural form.

Another point of criticism Twain is the distribution of the genders on nouns , which from his point of view has no meaning or system. He cites the female turnip and the neuter fräulein as examples. This testifies to "excessive reverence for the turnip" ("overwrought reverence for the turnip") and "thick-skinned disrespect for the girl" ("callous disrespect for the girl"). In the following he gives more examples, including body parts that are male, female and neuter. This leads him to the conclusion that a German man may believe he is a man. In truth, however, he is only a third male, in which he does not differ from every woman and cow in Germany. The distribution of the sexes also causes major problems for English-speaking students of German with the correct use of personal pronouns. To make this clear, he cites the story of the fishwife and his sad fate (Tale Of The Fishwife And Its Sad Fate) , in which he uses the personal pronouns in the English text as in German.

Twain also has major problems with similar German terms, which he often confuses. So he confuses the word “married” with “spurned”, “painted” and “suspicious”. However, he himself limits that this problem is likely to occur for foreigners in all languages.

Twain emphasizes the variety of meanings of the words "blow" and "train". For example, he mentions the meanings “shock”, “measure of time”, “coinage” and “race” for Schlag. For “move” he gives the synonyms “jerk”, “air flow”, “chess movement”, “team” and “inclination”. With these two words and the word “also”, which he equates with the English “you know”, a foreigner is “master of the situation”. Whenever a word is missing, you can insert “blow” or “train” and there is a high probability that you will hit the right term. If not, you can give yourself a "so" time to think about it.

Illustration by Walter Francis Brown in the original of Die terrible German language subtitled with "A complete word"

Compound words in German meet with great criticism of Twain . They are not words, but alphabetical processions. Some are even so long that they have a perspective. As examples, he cites "General State Council meetings", "Child preservation institutions" and "Armistice negotiations". These words are also not in a dictionary and so one must first look up every single sub-word in order to develop their meaning, which is a "tedious and harassing business". Such words used to exist in English (as an example he cites “never-to-be-forgotten”), but these have now disappeared. In English-language newspapers, however, phrases like “Mrs. Assistant District Attorney ”, who saved neither time nor effort and also awarded unjustified titles.

In addition, Twain is of the opinion that the description of loud and tumultuous events in the German language should sound tamer than in English. For example, “toothbrush”, the English word for toothbrush, is stronger than the German word “Ausbruch” for the English “explosion”. The German words “Schlacht” “Gewitter” and “Hölle” are also weaker than their English equivalents “battle”, “storm” and “hell”.

Positive

In addition to the many points of criticism, Twain also finds some positive aspects of the German language, which he describes as a “brief and pleasant task”. He praises the capitalization of nouns as a “good idea”, which is noticeable in this language because of its rarity. You can usually recognize the noun of a sentence directly through them.

In addition, the German pronunciation of words is easy to learn and can be derived directly from the pronunciation of the individual letters. This is a clear advantage over English, in which z. B. the word "bow" is pronounced differently depending on the meaning (bow, bow or bow).

Twain also praised the expressiveness of some German words. He emphasizes words that deal with family life and love, nature, inactivity and calm, as well as with fairy tales. In addition, there are many words that express pathos. Certain German songs could make people cry who did not understand German just because of the sound of the words.

Twain also sees the German habit of repeating words several times within a paragraph as positive. In contrast, there is a tendency in English to use a different word in such cases, but only comes close to it in meaning. This inaccuracy is worse than the repetition.

Suggestions for improvement

Travel pictures - edition from 1910

Twain makes some suggestions for improving the German language. In doing so, he partly refers directly to the aforementioned points of criticism. So he proposes to abolish the dative , because you never know exactly when you are in the dative and how you will ever get out. In addition, the verb should be moved to a front position in the sentence where it can be recognized more easily.

Twain also suggests importing strong words from the English language. He explains this requirement in a footnote. The German curse “Damned” and its variations sound too soft and expressionless and the German “Oh! Gott! ”Is not to be compared with the English“ Goddamn ”.

The genders of the German language should be reorganized as intended by the creator .

The long compound words, Twain's opinion, should be abolished, or the speaker should be encouraged to recite them with pauses for refreshments. Speakers should also be asked to refrain from adding garlands like “have been had become hiss” at the end of their speech.

Parentheses should be abolished and their use punished with death . Finally, Twain suggests keeping only the words “Zug” and “Schlag” with their appendages and discarding the rest of the vocabulary.

Résumé

At the end of his essay, Twain summarizes his experiences with the German language in a comparison with English and French. In doing so, he predicts a bad future for Germans if it doesn't change:

“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. "

“My philological studies have convinced me that a gifted man can learn English (excluding spelling and pronunciation) in thirty hours, French in thirty days and German in thirty years. So it is clear that the latter language needs to be trimmed and corrected. If it were to stay as it is, it would have to be gently and respectfully removed from the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn them. "

July 4th speech

Attached to the essay is a July 4th speech that Twain delivered at a banquet for the Anglo-American Student Club. In this speech, given in a mixture of English and German, Twain praised the friendship between the Americans and the British, who were enemies a hundred years ago, and hopes that this friendship will continue forever. In addition, he also expresses his difficulties with the German language.

reception

On the occasion of Twain's 100th anniversary of his death, Manfred Pfister says: "It is a delicious text, one of the best texts that has ever been written about learning a foreign language."

Guy Deutscher notes that Twain mainly complained about German as it was the language he was learning. For example, Twain's criticism of the gender distribution also applies to many other languages, for example French , Russian and Latin . Linguist Monika S. Schmid describes the frustration Twain describes when learning German as authentic. In addition, his complaint that there are more exceptions to rules than examples of them is correct in many cases.

For Gunnar Magnusson, Die terrible German language is Twain's most famous philological essay. In addition, Magnusson is of the opinion that some of Twain's criticisms have improved significantly over time. The dative-e, apart from a few fixed phrases, has almost completely disappeared today. In addition, especially in spoken German, the verb has been moved significantly forward through “ brackets ” in the sentence. The “capable nibs” in the journalistic and scientific field, referred to by Twain, now write as clearly and elegantly in German as in English. The compound nouns are still a problem, however. Studies have even shown that their use has increased steadily since 1900. Magnusson sees the capitalization praised by Twain as critical. In his opinion, their abolition would probably lead to many sentences in German being simplified.

Mark Twain and the German language

Twain came into contact with the German language in his youth. Several German immigrants with whom he had contact lived in his hometown of Hannibal . He developed the desire to learn the language. As a teacher, he chose a German shoemaker. However, the attempt failed because of his poor didactic skills. In 1853 Twain worked in St. Louis, where about 30% of the population were of German descent at the time. Twain worked there briefly for the Anzeiger des Westens , the largest German-language newspaper in the region. In April 1870, his wife Olivia , whom he married that same year, hired a German housemaid. This was the beginning of a tradition that would last for many years. In preparation for a trip to Germany, the family hired a German nanny in 1877 and began learning German. In the spring of 1878, the family went on a trip to Europe with Clara Spaulding, a friend of Twain's wife, on which they also visited Switzerland and Germany. Twain's wife, his eldest daughter and Clara Spaulding made considerable progress in the German language. Twain's progress remained less, which he attributed to lack of time. As a result of this stay in Europe, the semi-fictional travelogue Stroll through Europe was created , in the appendix of which there is a satirical description of German newspapers in addition to Die terrible German language .

Even after returning from Europe, Twain and his family remained interested in the German language, and language lessons continued. In addition, German found its way into letters, notebooks and some literary works by Twain. He used the German language as a humorous effect in his short story Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning , published in 1888 . In 1888 Twain published the bilingual play Mastery: In Three Acts , which requires a solid knowledge of German to be understood. In it, two sisters are sent by their father to a German village to improve their German and to separate them from their admirers. The admirers, however, are also sent to the immediate vicinity of the sisters' village to improve their knowledge of German, and this leads to romantic entanglements. With the piece, Twain criticizes the use of language as a means of communication and shows that it is more of an obstacle to understanding, especially among lovers. He himself pointed out that German could have been replaced by any other foreign language. In addition, in the 23rd chapter of the novel Ein Yankee at the court of King Arthur , published in 1889, Twain describes the magical effect of the long German words.

In 1891 and 1892, Twain and his family stayed again in Germany and Switzerland. Between 1897 and 1899 they spent 19 months in Vienna . At the invitation of the journalists and writers' association “Concordia” in Vienna, Twain gave the humorous lecture The horrors of the German language there on October 31, 1897 on the occasion of a banquet . In a mixture of more or less good, but largely understandable German, which was interspersed with English when he didn't know what to do, he promoted his “reforms” of the German language from A Tramp Abroad . He described himself as “the most loyal friend of the German language - and not just now, but from a long time ago”, which he probably meant more seriously than it sounded, and explained: “Several days ago the correspondent of a local newspaper came up with a sentence which contained one hundred and twelve words and in it seven parentheses were nested and the subject was changed seven times. Just think, gentlemen, in the course of the journey of a single sentence, the poor, persecuted, tired subject has to change trains seven times. "His audience" [...] beg [he] to seek advice from [him], guide them mentioned reforms. Then you will have a splendid language and afterwards [...] you will at least understand what you said yourself. "

Twain also expressed his sympathy for the German language by having the slogan "God be gracious, O my delight" engraved on the gravestone of his wife Olivia, who died in 1904.

Expenses (selection)

  • The horrors of the German language. In: travel pictures and various sketches. Volume 6, Verlag Robert Lutz, Stuttgart 1891, pp. 74-86.
  • The horrors of the German language. translated by Margarete Jacobi, Henny Koch and L. Ottmann. In: Travel Pictures. Volume 3, Hesse and Becker, Leipzig, approx. 1910, pp. 123-136.
  • The terrible German language. translated by Ulrich Steindorff. In: Ulrich Steindorff (Ed.): Stroll through Europe. Ullstein, Berlin 1922, pp. 315–342.
  • The Awful German Language. The terrible German language. translated by Ulrich Steindorff Carrington. Manuscriptum Verlagsbuchhandlung, Recklinghausen 1996, ISBN 3-933497-41-8 . (English German)
  • The Awful German Language / The terrible German language. Translated and commented by Holger Hanowell. Reclam 2018, ISBN 978-3-15-019493-5 . (English German)

literature

  • Holger Kersten: Mark Twain, “the most loyal friend of the German language”. In: Mark Twain: The Awful German Language . Brochure from the US Embassy Berlin , 2010, pp. 45–57. daad.org (PDF)
  • Gunnar Magnusson: Interlinear Translation and Discourse à la Mark Twain . In: Gunilla Anderman, Margaret Rogers (Eds.): Translation Today. Trends and Perspectives. Multilingual Matters, 2003, ISBN 1-85359-618-3 , pp. 125-139. web.archive.org (PDF)

Web links

Wikisource: The Awful German Language  - Sources and full texts (English)
Wikiquote: The Terrible German Language  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Twain's Selected Humorous Writings. VI. Volume: travel pictures and various sketches. Verlag von Robert Lutz, Stuttgart 1892, translator unknown, pp. 74–86.
  2. ↑ Holger Kersten: Mark Twain, "the most loyal friend of the German language" . 2010, p. 48.
  3. ^ Translation from Ana Maria Brock: The Awful German Language. The terrible German language. Nikol Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-86820-039-3 .
  4. ↑ Manfred Pfister: The terrible German language. Literary scholar on Mark Twain's difficult relationship with German. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur. April 21, 2010, accessed on May 20, 2018 (interview with Ulrike Timm).
  5. ^ Guy Deutscher: The Unfolding of Language. An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention. Arrow Books, 2006, ISBN 0-09-946025-4 , pp. 41-42 ( online at Google Books ).
  6. ↑ Monika S. Schmid: First language attrition, use, and maintenance. The case of German Jews in anglophone countries. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam , 2002, p. 157. researchgate.net (PDF)
  7. ^ Gunnar Magnusson: Interlinear Translation and Discourse à la Mark Twain . 2003.
  8. ↑ Holger Kersten: Mark Twain, "the most loyal friend of the German language" . 2010, pp. 49-53.
  9. ^ German Journals ( Wikisource )
  10. ↑ a b c d Holger Kersten: Mark Twain, "the most loyal friend of the German language" . 2010, pp. 55-57.
  11. ↑ Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning . ( Wikisource )
  12. ↑ JR LeMaster, James Darrell Wilson, Christie Graves Hamric (Eds.): The Mark Twain Encyclopedia . Taylor & Francis, 1993, ISBN 0-8240-7212-X , p. 316 ( Google Books ).
  13. ↑ JR LeMaster, James Darrell Wilson, Christie Graves Hamric (Eds.): The Mark Twain Encyclopedia . Taylor & Francis, 1993, ISBN 0-8240-7212-X , p. 507 ( Google Books ).
  14. ↑ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court , Chapter 13 ( Wikisource , English)
  15. ↑ Mark Twain: The horrors of the German language. In: Project Gutenberg. November 21, 1897, accessed on May 20, 2018 (address given to the Press Club in Vienna).
  16. ↑ Peter Eppel: "Concordia should be your name ..." 125 years of journalists and writers' association "Concordia". A documentation on the press and contemporary history of Austria . Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1984, ISBN 3-205-07250-2 , pp. 120–122 (there also the full wording of the speech).