The Awful German Language is an essay by the American author Mark Twain in which he humorously outlines the complexity of the language and the difficulties he encountered while learning it.
It is a must-read book for students of the often baffling German language.
Twain, most famous for his Huckleberry Finn stories, travelled extensively through Europe in german language wrote about his experiences, especially in Germany in A Tramp Abroad, which was published in From mark twain essay the awful german language moment I arrived in Berlin learning German has been one of my main priorities and has at times seemed like an impossible task.
Anyone who has attempted to learn the language — and anyone who lives in and loves Berlin has hopefully at least tried — will appreciate the difficulties that Twain recounts.
He then runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. My philological studies here satisfied me that a gifted person ought to mark twain essay the awful german language English barring spelling and pronouncing in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. Swapping the Mississippi for the Spree, Twain returned to Berlin in October mark twain spent the winter living in the city.
His admiration is clear in his description of the German more info in his account of that time, The Chicago of Europe. Email will not be published required.
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Illustration by Chaim Garcia. It hit home not only because of its humor and accuracy, but because I embarked on a similarly painful voyage of discovery as that which you describe.
This is a link to the humorous essay that the author Mark Twain wrote in about his time trying to learn German during his time in Germany. I think I subscribed to you if you don't mind.
Thankfully, those of us who are English speakers and have taken the linguistic plunge in Germany — and promptly drowned while flailing about in its mother tongue — can take comfort that most Germans are ready to kindly throw us a life preserver auf Englisch. There is also tremendous solace to be taken in the fact that Mark Twain, one of the most accomplished exercisers of the English language, not only engaged in his own struggle to learn German but also decided to turn his rapier wit on the source of his discomfort.
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