mark twain life is too short to learn german
It is wiser to find out than suppose. Heidelberg’s only Mark Twain impersonator takes his work seriously. The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. See what's happening around town RIGHT NOW! Read some of his quotes below and you will be in awe of his humor and intelligence. Difficult? Mark Twain was one of my dad’s favorite authors. The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. var idcomments_acct='e1024603c553ef9cfed5db6221bfa719';var idcomments_post_id;var idcomments_post_url; • Go to the main Munich Backstory page. No, the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin -- which he eats, himself, as his Reward. Unsourced in POP! 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. Slur along to the most popular tunes - with German and English lyrics, and videos. Part of the difficulty of understanding Mark Twain's political outlook is due to terminology and the tendency of politics to corrupt the meaning of everything. Very well, I am ready to reform it. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere -- so it leaves this sort of words out. During this 1878 stay in Germany, Twain had a dream in which, according to his notebook, "all bad foreigners went to German Heaven—couldn't talk and wished they had gone to the oth… It is as bad as Latin. 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. And eighthly, and last, I would retain Zug and Schlag, with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. [1]. 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. 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." "Wenn wir bedenken, dass wir alle verrückt sind, ist das Leben erklärt." Mark Twain (*1835 - †1910) „Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.“ Anhören „Leben ist das, was passiert, während du eifrig dabei bist, andere Pläne zu machen.“ Allen Saunders (*1899 - †1986) „Life isn't about finding yourself. This sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books, but what you may not know is how much of a bad ass he was at living life. Sail away from the safe harbor. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. That is from The Old Mamselle's Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. Mark Twain ist vor allem als Autor der Bücher über die Abenteuer von Tom Sawyer und Huckleberry Finn bekannt. him. ... it is too much trouble to look now. Dream. 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. Toggle navigation. I wish to submit the following local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration: Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to take the pathos out of that picture -- indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. In this text Mark Twain pokes fun at the surprising length of many German words. The first group is less crowded. 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. As often as you see him called a liberal, he is called a conservative, and sometimes both in the same breath. The name Mark Twain is a pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Mark Twain's essay on German “The Awful German Language” is a scream. 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 some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. I could have used it sooner, but I was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. Danach hat er auf weitere Experimente verzichtet. "Also!" Catch the trade winds in your sails. It seems to me that the Germans could do worse than import it into their language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. I have tried this process upon some of the above examples. 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. -- these words cannot describe it. “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.18, St. Martin's Press He says, for instance: Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. 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). Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache (englischer Originaltitel: The Awful German Language) oder auch Die Schrecken der deutschen Sprache[1] ist ein kurzer humoristisch-satirischer Essay des US-amerikanischen Schriftstellers Mark Twain aus dem Jahre 1880. One often sees a remark like this in our papers: "Mrs. Assistant District Attorney Johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season." 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. If I had not shown that the German is a difficult language, I have at least intended to do so. And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. ... Tarnoff brings young Twain to life: What people remembered best about him, aside from his brambly red brows and rambling gait, was his strange way of speaking: a drawl that spun syllables slowly, like fallen branches on the surface of a stream. Mark Twain Inspiring Quotes. I take a great interest in these curiosities. 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. Now observe the Adjective. There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. 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. I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English. Details of the beer tents, dates, times, FAQs, photos and plenty more. This great ice-cream cafe has flavours inclduding white sausage, Oktoberfest beer and pregnancy test. The capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. He also wrote the amusingly literal translation that you see below. So throw off the bowlines. ', and 'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).' Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. 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. 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. 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. Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! 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." A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set … This was the word Damit. If the stranger hadn't been there! 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. atrium-design.sk. 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. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and important changes. 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. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. Discover. But he WAS. And Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen has published a thoroughly researched and reliable source, The Quotable Mark Twain. https://www.thoughtco.com/religion-quotes-by-mark-twain-2832666 In this retelling of a chapter from Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, deutschalsfremdsprache.ch did a similar feat like with the above French story: keeping the original narrative and restructuring grammar and vocabulary to make for easy German reading. -- troublesome? The University of Virginia hosts a site that also allows keyword searches of many of Twain's works. That is manifestly absurd. Sail away from the safe harbor. Also! Upon his arrival in Germany, the fruit of this recent scholarship was attested to in the advice of a friend: "Speak in German, Mark. "Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. 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. Mark Twain and Bermuda Samuel Langhorne Clemens loved these islands so much they became his second home . I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. One of the crazier things to do in Munich. 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?" These are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. And then finally, Twain’s overall lament about learning German: 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. Jump from Mark Twain's Essay on German back to Destination Munich Home, Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Cheap Munich - 10 money saving travel tips. Die Aussicht auf dem Königsstuhl mehr grösser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so schön, lob' Gott! 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 inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within 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 haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. Mark Twain … Sail away from the safe harbor. Infractions of this law should be punishable with death. 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. ', 'Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Clemens was an American humorist, journalist, lecturer, and novelist who acquired international 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. 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. 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. Twain’s essays about his struggles with the language are hilarious and ring just as true today as they did when first published in his 1880 travel journal A Tramp Abroad. D as Leben ist zu kurz, um mit häss lichem Möbel zu leben, das Ihre m Geschmack. He tried to learn German and reports in this texts about many difficulties he encountered. 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. Introduction. 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. 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. and this will give him a moment's chance to think of the needful word. The greatest lesson I’ve learned from Mark Twain is to be myself and never allow age to define me. I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercised regularly. In this text Mark Twain pokes fun at the surprising length of many German words. 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.