German is certainly not an easy language. Many people even claim that it is one of the most difficult languages in the world1. But what is the point of comparing it to other living languages which, for English speakers even worse, only consist of glottal stops? And what is it exactly that makes German so hard to learn? Bastian Sick, who is the author of the Der Dativ ist dem Genetiv sein Tod book series and who works as a journalist for the Spiegel magazine, is a major contributor to the insight that German obviously is a demanding language and challenging to learn and use for non-native speakers; had already understood impressively well in the 19th century. This is going to be a critical essay about the intricacies of the German language and how they are depicted in Mark Twain’s The Awful German Language2. In the following, I am going to outline the great writer’s perspective on the German language and I will also continue to evaluate on it from today’s point of view.

“Ich habe das Deutsche Sprache gelernt und bin ein glücklicher kind, you bet.”3 Without doubt, Mark Twain was never really a master of this language, yet he was deeply fascinated by it. When he was an adolescent (and long before he called himself Mark Twain4), he had a German friend named Fritz whom he taught some English sentences in exchange for some German ones. Later in his life, Mark Twain spent five years working as a Mississippi pilot which allowed him to get in contact with a large variety of people each talking their respective language. As an author, he became famous for his travel diary The Innocents Abroad (1869), and before spending 16 months in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France 1878/79, he had tirelessly studied German grammar – with “great difficulty and great annoyance”5.

Vices and Virtues of German

There are 25 pages6 about the vices and two about the virtues of the German language. Considering this, this language must be pretty “awful“, mustn’t it? On these 25 pages, Mark Twain examines all the relevant linguistic features of German. Astonishingly, the topics that he discusses are the topics modern linguists still work on: Cases7 (Nominative, Dative, Accusative, Genitive), for example. There is also a section about the verb. Twain uncovers the positioning of the German verb as the last part of a sentence as a standard German procedure: “I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea.”8 He also reviews divisible verbs9. The function of pronouns is beautifully illustrated by the self-written story that excessively uses pronouns called “Tale of the Fishwife and Its sad Fate”10. Nouns, their gender and their length are what the grammatical journey ends with. It is really amazing how well and profoundly he understood German grammar and how little it helped him speak the darn thing11.

His task to show that German is an “awful” difficult language is underpinned by the testimonials of two students of German. One of them resigned after three months, because he only managed to order beer with “zwei glas!”12. The other learner, who experienced that the sound of the German word “damit” resolved his emotional stress, died after being told that the word was emphasized on the last syllable and not on the first one as he had thought it would be13.

After all these troubles, Mark Twain finally admits that there are indeed some advantages to German. As one of the most impressive virtues, he mentions the constant capitalization of nouns. In contrast to the English language, you will have less trouble transcribing what you have heard to a piece of paper. In German, you write a word the way you say it. Some German words “are singularly and powerfully effective”14 as their “sound”15 was “correct”16, interpreting “meanings with truth and exactness”17. Due to their exactness, Mark Twain is of the opinion that repeating the same word is legitimate, but very opposite to what is done in English.

Thus Mark Twain concludes: “I have shown that the German language needs reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it.”18Therefore, he makes eight suggestions, of which some can be taken seriously and put into practice. As I don’t want to spoil your reading pleasure, I won’t give them away here, but rather let you read up on them (p. 56-60).

Dying and Killing

In the same way as he had contributed satirical content to his brother’s newspaper from early childhood on, Mark Twain humorously reveals his insights about the German language in this essay. And that is something which makes it very pleasurable to read as well as interesting for a future student of German. He often compares the learning of German to fighting. Between the lines, his essay reads itself like a war diary in which many dead bodies remain behind, if you look back. However, there may be no looking back until you are dead yourself – for “only the dead have time to learn it.”19

On his troublesome way to decent German, it seems as if he had to accept casualties: “Three of our teachers had died in the meantime.” As if he had personally shot these people who must have tried to attack him with pronouns – even if it had been simply to address him formally: “Whenever a person says SIE to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.”20 Despite all that, and due to his attraction to the German language, he became a hunter and gatherer of long German words21): “I take a great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum.”22 Considering himself a veteran of German, he helps new recruits how to defeat the biggest difficulties: “In Germany, when you load your conversational gun it is always best to throw in a SCHLAG or two and a ZUG or two, because it doesn’t make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with THEM. Then you blandly say ALSO, and load up again.”23

Fighting Back

Although Mark Twain’s essay is written satirically, it wants to be taken seriously.  For this reason, I will now criticize some things that have been said.

On page 16 he explains the way divisible verbs work in German with the example of abreisen, which means to depart. He uses the following example: “The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, [...] once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED.” Mark Twain now claims that the verb could not be understood until read to the very end. Let’s look at the German translation now: “Da die Koffer nun gepackt waren, REISTE er, nachdem er seine Mutter und Schwestern geküßt, [...] noch einmal an die Brust dessen zu legen, den sie inniger liebte als ihr Leben, AB.” What we can see is that Twain actually did a wrong translation. In German, however, you would understand right from the beginning that the person is about to travel or to -part. The right translation should have been: The trunks being now ready, he PARTED after kissing his mother and sisters, [...] once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, DE-.

On the very same page he vehemently starts complaining about the pronoun “sie”, which has to bear all functions of you, she, her, it, they and them. It is in this context that he states that “whenever a person says SIE to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger”24, leaving the non-native speaker uninformed that Sie is a common way to formally address someone that we are not familiar with or with whom we do not entertain a close relationship. He fails to explain the difference between addressing somebody with the informal (casual) Du or by using the formal Sie25.

Rather a remark than a criticism is the fact that from today’s perspective we have to reconsider how “also” can be translated into English26. Mark Twain describes the use of the word as merely a filler function. However, as we all know, there are many more meanings to it. It can be used as a transition word to connect thoughts or sometimes as a softener. Furthermore, in contrast to what Mark Twain says, it does not only convey the meaning of “you know”.  When you search for it in a dictionary27 or by looking into German school books28, you will not find Twain’s suggested translation; more likely is well or a meditating er.

Another confusing point is the example about “damit” on page 48. As I have pointed out earlier, the unlucky student experienced that the sound of this word resolved his emotional stress. Since it was only the sound and not the meaning, and because of the fact that he stressed the first syllable, I assume it must have been the similarly sounding English dammit! or damnit! that Mark Twain refers to – maybe he was aware of the reference to dammit, leaving it to the reader to find out about it. But maybe he was not at all aware about this point, therefore my additional remark. I think it is also noteworthy that “damit” can be stressed on either the first or the second syllable, depending on what you want to say. DAmit would refer to with this similarly to a pronoun, whereas daMIT would act as a conjunction meaning in order to.

Conclusion

Despite my critical comments, I still consider Mark Twain’s essay an important piece of work that points out the obstacles a learner has to overcome “damit” one gets to decent German: cases, the gender of nouns, the right positioning of the verb (which sometimes can be divisible) in a sentence, and pronouns. These are the problems that sent Mark Twain on the warpath but through which he also discovered the beautiful aspects of German: Words so powerful and effective that they can be repeated over and over again, and, on top of that, you even write them like you say them. Battle-scarred after nine weeks of excessive study of German, he summarizes his war experience as follows: “My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”29

In the same way that Mark Twain seeks to simplify German grammar as early as 1878, today’s linguists are still trying to cope with the same problems of German grammar. Astonishingly, they are stumbling over exactly the same difficulties Mark Twain had formulated in his essay from the 19th century. Actually, this is quite impressive. Therefore, in my opinion, it is very helpful to let second language learners participate in his experience.

Stop Fighting, Start Learning

If you are not yet a speaker of German, and after reading all this30, you may ask yourself why you should go through the trouble of learning German. I want to motivate you by giving you three reasons why you should engage in this task:

German is not as hard as you think: Since German is written similarly to how it is spoken, you will be capable of uttering some German words very quickly. When you are a speaker of German, you will not only be able to understand the American expressions Zeitgeist, Leitmotiv, but it will also make you aware how fundamental the presence of German(s) has been since the time when the United States were founded. Multiple breweries, Levi’s jeans and any sort of kindergarten give proof of that.

As for me, I would like to talk to you in German someday – for it is the language that, with all its beautiful words, makes me ein glückliches Kind, you bet!

  1. That’s certainly not true given the almost unpronounceable guttural phonemes of Mongolian languages enriched with an over boarding grammar structure, for example. [↩]
  2. If not marked separately, all subsequent quotations can be found in: Mark Twain, The Awful German Language, Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1963. [↩]
  3. p. 123 [↩]
  4. Mark Twain’s birth name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. [↩]
  5. p. 4 [↩]
  6. Due to the nature of this book, the number of pages is divided by half, not counting the pages with the German translation. [↩]
  7. p. 8 [↩]
  8. p. 6; Something like the topological model by Drach for describing German word order did not exist until 1937 see: ch.6 – Karin Pittner, Deutsche Syntax, Narr Verlag Tübingen, 2007. [↩]
  9. See section underneath – Fighting Back [↩]
  10. p. 30,32 [↩]
  11. In my opinion, language teachers have to learn from that. [↩]
  12. p. 48 [↩]
  13. I will deal with this in my criticism section underneath – Fighting Back. [↩]
  14. p. 52 [↩]
  15. p. 54 [↩]
  16. p. 54 [↩]
  17. p. 54; Mark Twain doesn’t give an example; Leitmotiv or Schadenfreude might be examples. [↩]
  18. p. 54 [↩]
  19. p. 60 [↩]
  20. p. 18 [↩]
  21. i.e. compound nouns like Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen (p.42 [↩]
  22. p. 40 [↩]
  23. p. 38 [↩]
  24. p. 18 [↩]
  25. This refers tot he German practice of duzen and siezen [↩]
  26. p. 36 [↩]
  27. Langescheidt Collins, Großes Studienwörterbuch Englisch, Langenscheidt, Berlin, 2006 [↩]
  28. Red Line and Green Line series by Klett. [↩]
  29. According to Langenscheidt, you can reach level B1 in about 400 hours of German. See: Lemcke, Berliner Platz 1-3 series, Langenscheidt, 2002. [↩]
  30. By that, I refer to Mark Twain’s essay as well as my own. [↩]

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