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

with the bird, likely -- and this indicates MOVEMENT, which has the effect
of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing DEM Regen into DEN
Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer
up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the
blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen." Then the teacher lets me
softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a
sentence, it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case, regardless
of consequences -- and therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop
"wegen DES Regens."
N.B. -- I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an
"exception" which permits one to say "wegen DEN Regen" in certain peculiar
and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to
anything BUT rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. 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
enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses,
making pens with 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 HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or words to that effect, and the
monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of
the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books
are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand
on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to
learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always
remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of the
Parenthesis distemper -- though they are usually so mild as to cover only a
few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries
some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal of
what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent
German novel -- which a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly
literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for
the assistance of the reader -- though in the original there are no
parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to
the remote verb the best way he can:
"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-
now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government
counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1]
1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehuellten jetz
sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet.
That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that