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

German sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and
then works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use -- the moment
he begins to speak his tongue files the track and all those labored males
and females come out as "its." And even when he is reading German to
himself, he always calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in
this way:
TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]
2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and ancient English) fashion.
It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he
rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep he
is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its
Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized
some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye. and
it cannot get her out. 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. And now a
Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No,
she bites off a Fin, she holds her in her Mouth -- will she swallow her? No,
the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin --
which he eats, himself, as his Reward. 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. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more.
Time presses -- is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, joy, with flying
Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the generous she-Female is too
late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, it
has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for its loved Ones to
lament over, is this poor smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap!
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.
There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business
is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all
languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no
similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner.
It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in the German. Now there
is that troublesome word VERMAEHLT: to me it has so close a resemblance --
either real or fancied -- to three or four other words, that I never know
whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until I look in
the dictionary, and then I find it means the latter. There are lots of such
words and they are a great torment. To increase the difficulty there are
words which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not; but they make just