Warning. The wee essay that follows makes extensive use of anachronism, for such is what passes for humor among people who spend their lives in the dusty attics, musty basements, and abandoned self-storage units of our civilization.
Recently, I took advantage of a long drive to enjoy a reading of The Awful German Language. Written by Mark Twain, and read by the reliably delightful Luke Amadeus Ranieri, this essay recounts the many travails suffered by the author in the course of his quest to learn the language of Heine’s Die Lorelei, Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy, and Nena’s Neunundneunzig Luftballons.
Mr. Clemens begins his Grummelfest (which means what you think it does) by complaining of the German custom of making small changes to the form of a word in response the role that it plays in a sentence. Thus, he finds fault with the fact that something as simple as “the rain,” can be rendered, depending upon circumstances, as der Regen, dem Regen, den Regen, or des Regens.
In doing this, the Connecticut Confederate in King Wilhelm’s court, neglects to mention the great advantage of this arrangement. In the English-speaking world, writers who wish to be read (and not merely featured in syllabi) start sentences with immediate mention of the doer of the deed in question. Thus, for example, when I say that “the wind blew rain in my face,” all concerned recognize that the initiator of the insult to my visage was a mighty gust of air.
If, however, I wish to stress that the spotting of my spectacles had less to do with a breeze and more to do with the water it propelled, I am obliged to craft a monument to awkwardness. The German speaker, however, need not say “the rain was blown in my face by the wind.” Rather, thanks to the wonders of the accusative case, he can start with the object of the action (den Regen), thereby emphasizing its role as the Schwerpunkt of the sentence.
Similarly, the dative case allows der Deutschsprachiger to avoid the egoism inherent in the phrase “in my face.” Instead, when he says den Regen blies mir der Wind in das Gesicht (“the rain blew to me the wind in the face”) he is able to describe the trajectory of the offending droplets and, at the same time, entirely avoid the question, which has puzzled philosophers for centuries, of whether or not a person actually owns his mug.
To be continued …
Mr. Ranieri has been kind enough to post the libretto of his recitation of The Awful German Language.
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the rain was blown in my face by the wind.
Let me fix that for ya...
The durned wind blew the rain in my face.
Or in West Texan, "Dayum wind, got ma glasses wet."
German is interesting.
You can say something in high german, formal German, low german, common german, etc.
Salve, I see you too are a man of culture. Lucas introduced a new technique to learning Latin called the "Ranieri-Dowling Method" which modified the older "Dowling Method". I have used his improves method in the past to help with Latin vocabulary retention. Also his Latin pronunciation is second to none. Ave Christus Rex.