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

character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German
equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. Boom, burst, crash,
roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell,
groan; battle, hell. These are magnificent words; the have a force and
magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. But their
German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with,
or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display and not for superior
usefulness in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a battle which
was called by so tame a term as a SCHLACHT? Or would not a comsumptive feel
too much bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a
seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word GEWITTER was employed to
describe? And observe the strongest of the several German equivalents for
explosion -- AUSBRUCH. Our word Toothbrush is more powerful than that. It
seems to me that the Germans could do worse than import it into their
language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. The German
word for hell -- Hoelle -- sounds more like HELLY than anything else;
therefore, how necessary chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a
man were told in German to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of
feeling insulted?
Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, I
now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. The
capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far before this
virtue stands another -- that of spelling a word according to the sound of
it. 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?" we should be
obliged to reply, "Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by
itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what
it signifies -- whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of
one's head, or the forward end of a boat."
There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully
effective. 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, respose,
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 German songs which
can make a stranger to the language cry. 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.
The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the
right one. they repeat it several times, if they choose. That is wise. 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. Repetition may be bad, but surely