OT, but gut for medicine.
They say that laughter is the best medicine and since I'm getting
over a cold I've never laughed so hard in a long time.
My grandmother tried to teach me Das (oder ist est Die)
German and I swear that's what drove me around the bend.
I never recovered from it
Pete
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 11:26 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Re-2: How do you say dronino?
Martin wrote: "@#!GRMBLGnggnn%&$ !!!!"
Darren opined: "To be fair, EVERYTHING in German sounds like that."
Very off-topic but once again timefor THAT - Please enjoy :-)
The Awful German Language
A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing
language it is.
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
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 tur
n 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 - Nomina-tive 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
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 that therefore this bird
stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the
distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by
heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a
memorandum book. In German a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
Think what reverence that shows for the turnip, and what disrespect for
the girl. See how it looks in print. I translate this from a conversation
in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
Gretchen: "Wilhelm, where is the turnip?"
Wilhelm: "She has gone to the kitchen."
Gretchen: "Where is the beautiful English maiden?"
Wilhelm: "It has gone to the opera."
The Germans have a kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a
verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter
and the other hauat the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more
confusing than that? These things are called 'separable verbs'. The
German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider
the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of
the crime is pleased with his performance. A favourite one is reiste ab,
which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and
reduced to English.
"The trunks being now ready, he de- after kissing his mother and sisters,
and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in
simple white muslin with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich
brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the
terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor
aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more
dearly than life itself, parted."
Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these
examples:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen
Alterthumswissenschaften
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen
Wiederherstellungsbestrebungen
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they
are not rare; one can open a German newspaper 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.
(From A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain, 1879)
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