mothwing | The Awful German Language

Reading all the texts on the various didactic theories makes me wonder how those of my fellow students are getting on with it whose native language is not German.
They are better off than us in some cases of course, since some of those texts seem to be written by an author who wanted to demonstrate that he is a balanced bilingual of German and Latin - the French students may have advantages there.

Especially the length of the sentences puts me in mind of what Mark Twain wrote in 1880 on the German language, in The Awful German Language:

"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.'"

Die deutsche Verbklammer... terrible.

My sincerest condolences to all who endeavour to learn my mother tongue. If it wasn't mine, I wouldn't try, I fear. It's worse than French, and I completely failed at that.

Love and *hugs* to all!

And get well soon, Sad.