Mark Twain

A little learning makes the whole
world kin. – Proverbs xxxii,7
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Hei-
delberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with
my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was
greatly interested; and after I had talked awhile he said my
German was very rare, possibly a “unique;” and wanted to
add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my
art, he would also have known that it would break any
collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on
our German during several weeks at that time, and al-
though we had made good progress, it had been accom-
plished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of
our teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has
not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing
language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slip-shod
and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp.
One is washed about in it, hither and hither, in the most
helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a
rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the
general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he
turns over the page and reads, “Let the pupil make
note of the following exceptions.” He runs his eye down
and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than in-
stances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for anoth-
er Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and
continues to be, my experience. 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 in-
stance, 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 wait-
ing 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 an-
swer. 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 turn out to be when I look. I the interest of
science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is mas-
culine. Very well – then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply
in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlarge-
ment or discussion – Nominative case; but if this rain is ly-
ing around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is
then definitely located, it is doing something – that is, rest-


The Awful German Language / Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache. Englisch/Deutsch | Reclam Verlag
Twain, Mark – zweisprachige Ausgabe; englischsprachige Literatur – 19493www.reclam.de