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

again. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to a
German or an English conversation as to scatter it full of "Also's" or "You
knows."
In my note-book I find this entry:
July 1. -- In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was
successfully removed from a patient -- a North German from near Hamburg; but
as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under
the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. The sad event has cast
a gloom over the whole community.
That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the most
curious and notable features of my subject -- the length of German words.
Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these
examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they
are not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and see them
marching majestically across the page -- and if he has any imagination he
can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to
the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. Whenever
I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I
have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange
with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here rare
some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a
bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching
across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape --
but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it
blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel
through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help
there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere -- so it leaves this sort
of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly
legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of
them ought to have been killed. They are compound words with the hyphens
left out. The various words used in building them are in the dictionary, but
in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt the materials out, one by
one, and get at the meaning at last, but it is a tedious and harassing
business. I have tried this process upon some of the above examples.
"Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendshipdemonstrations," which is
only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations of friendship."
"Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems to be "Independencedeclarations," which
is no improvement upon "Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see.
"Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be