"Mark Twain. The Awful German Language (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Mark Twain.

The Awful German Language

A little learning makes the whole world kin.
Proverbs XXXII, 7

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. I spoke
entirely in that language. 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.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also
have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had
been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and
although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great
difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean
time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a
perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and
systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in
it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks
he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the
general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page
and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He
runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than
instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and
find 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 am
master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my
sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the
ground 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 consequence
to anybody): "Where is the bird?" 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. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must
stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that
answer. 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 -- or
possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is
either DER (the) Regen, or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to
which 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 being
MENTIONED, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this
rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then
definitely located, it is DOING SOMETHING -- that is, RESTING (which is one
of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain
into the Dative case, and makes it DEM Regen. However, this rain is not
resting, but is doing something ACTIVELY, -- it is falling -- to interfere