"The Awful German Language"

A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.

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.

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; 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 a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print--I translate this from a 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."

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) 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 engla"nder; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman-- engla"nderinn. 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 Engla"nderinn,"--which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.

There are some exceedingly useful words in this language. Schlag, for example; and zug. There are three-quarters of a column of schlags in the dictonary, 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. This is its simple and exact meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; but there are ways by which you can set it free, so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. 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.

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 been discovered yet.

One cannot overestimate the usefulness of schlag and zug. Armed just with these two, and the word also, what cannot the foreigner on German soil accomplish?