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Guten Tag:
This “On the Road” should be good fun for those of you who enjoy the topic of language. For
those of you who don’t, you can always press “delete” and then go make some soup.
As I’ve alluded to before, while living in Germany I’ve made an effort to learn some German. My motivation and
effort have varied throughout my residence here due to various factors, one of which is the daunting task this
represents. It is definitely not one of the easier languages to learn, though one of my German friends once encouraged
me by pointing out, “It can’t be all that hard. After all, little children learn it!”
I borrowed (stole) the title of this OTR from Mark Twain who, after living in both Switzerland (Zurich) and Germany
(Heidelberg), wrote an essay with this title in 1880 - one which I think is most aptly named. For a country which
prides itself in being both logical and efficient, how did its language become so complicated and sometimes contradictory
in structure? As Twain remarked, “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.”
Let’s start with this: why does any language assign genders to nouns? Where did that bright idea ever come from?
And in German, how did a spoon get to be masculine, a fork feminine, and a knife neuter? Can’t silverware at least
all be the same gender? Was there no logic at all put to use here, or was this just a twisted mind at work? And
as you can see, the Germans just had to outdo the French, who were quite content with only two genders. No, the
German language just has to have three genders!
Ok, some of them are logical: an electrical plug, “der stecker”, is male, and it gets inserted into “die steckdose”
(female). But then one also inserts “die Gluehbirne” (the lightbulb) into “die lampe“…both female. Go figure, right?
And since we are pursuing this line of thinking, why is a banana feminine? Ok, sorry – I know this is getting really
bad, but please tell me how in the world could a girl, “das Maedchen”, be neuter? Maybe they considered it to be
in better taste to make a less than mature female sexless? After all, in previous centuries the word for wife was
“Weib” - also neuter or sexless. Do you suppose there was a rationale for this, at least from her husband’s point
of view? But seriously folks, it often does seem as though there is little rhyme or reason employed when it comes
to assigning genders to nouns.
As Twain observed, “…a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male,
cats are female – Tom-cats included, of course; a person’s mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and
body are of the male sex; a person’s nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, hips, and toes are of the female sex;
and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart and conscience haven’t any sex at all. Now by the above dissection,
the reader will see that in German a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look at the matter closely,
he is bound to have his doubts.”
And it gets worse… all this is just for singular form. What if a noun is plural? Then “das Buch” (the book) becomes
“die Buecher” (the books). Both the article AND the spelling change. And sometimes the changes have zero logic
or consistency; “das Kind” (the child) becomes “die Kinder” (the children), “der Tisch” (the table) becomes “die
Tische”, “die Tomate” becomes “die Tomaten”, “die Lehrerin” (the female teacher) becomes “die Lehererinnen”, “der
Stuhl” (the chair) becomes “die Stuehle”, “der Kasten” (the box) becomes “die Kaesten”. There’re more variations,
but it’s getting depressing enough already, don’t you think?
But hold on, that’s just the Nominativ case. There’s the Akkusativ (when a noun becomes an object), and when “der”
(the) or “ein” (a ) Tisch conveniently become “den Tisch” or “einen Tisch”. Then there’s Dativ case when it’s “dem
Tisch” or “einem Tisch”, or Genitiv case when it’s “des” or “eines Tisches”. And this is merely the masculine!
Confused yet? No? Then stick around, there’s more fun.
When we throw in verbs the plot really thickens, thanks to “die Konjugation”. Let’s compare English and German,
conjugating the verb “to come”.
ENGLISH:
- I come
- we/you/they come
- he/she/it comes
GERMAN
- ich komme (I)
- Sie kommen (you - formal)
- du kommst (you – informal)
- er/sie/es kommt (he/she/it)
- wir kommen (we)
- sie kommen (they)
And if you’re wondering, no this is NOT a consistent pattern one can apply with each verb. Not even close! It
can get really crazy, believe me, since just when one thinks he or she has found a rule they can grab a hold of
and run with, up pops an exception. And then another. And so on! It starts to feel as though you are running through
a linguistic minefield.
Then there are despicable little beasts called “trennbare” verbs. Trennbare means detachable or separable, which
means we must cut the verb in two, putting half of it somewhere in the sentence, and then sticking the other half
of it somewhere at the end. For example, let’s take the sentence, “The instruction starts at 8 o’clock” and use
the verb “anfangen”, which means: to begin or start. In German this is written, “Der Unterricht faengt um 8 Uhr
an.”. Isn’t this fun? And I kept the sentence very short and simple for our example. As Twain writes, "The
German language is blistered all over with seperable verbs, and the wider the two portions of them are spread apart,
the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance." Can I get an amen here?
On top of that, the language has a propensity for creating nouns that are absolutely massive in size. Twenty letters
or more is commonplace, and thirty letters is not unheard of:
- Erziehungsberechtigten
- Verfahrensanweisungen
- Datenverzeichnisstrukturen
- Minamalanforderungen
- Sozialraumorientierung
- Wohnungsbaugesellschaften
- Fachleistungsstunden
- Verfahrensverantwortlicher
Go ahead and try wrapping your tongue around a few of them - and don’t forget the correct gender! By the way,
I found these on a couple of pages of a work report of Heide’s that I spotted laying around our flat. There was
no need to go digging for them… there are tons of these monsters everywhere. However, if you try to look them up
in your German/English dictionary you might not find them, as many are actually compound nouns without any hyphens,
created by just sticking two or more words together. Imagine decades ago, when the word “computer” was created,
if someone had instead just come up with the word “electronicdevicetoquicklystoreandprocessdata”. It seems to me
that that’s how it’s done in German …thank goodness they decided to adopt the word computer.
On the bright side regarding nouns, in case you haven’t noticed, at least the masochists who invented this language
had the decency to capitalize nouns so hapless readers like you and I can spot the rascals straight away! Quoting
Twain again, “Now that is a good idea, and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous in its loneliness.”
Let’s move on to pronouns. This is great fun too, especially when there are three different words for “you”. You
is “du” if you are on an friendly, informal basis, but “Sie” if you are not. How do you know which one to use in
various given situations? Take it from me, that can be a bit tricky (and potentially embarassing), especially in
a country where colleagues can work together in the same office for twenty years and yet might still refer to each
other in the formal “Sie” form. More than once, I’ve had friends or students tell me about having asked permission
from someone else to speak to them in the “du”, rather than the “Sie” form…and then being refused! Ouch!
Plus, ”you” in the plural form is “ihr”. And “sie” or “Sie” can also mean “she”, “her”, “they”, “them”, or sometimes
“it”. A particular flower shop I’ve often traveled by is named, “Blumen Fur Sie”. Since all the letters of the
sign are capitalized, here’s a question one might ponder - is it, “Flowers For You”, “Flowers For Her”, “Flowers
For Them”, “Flowers For It”? Just who or what the hell am I supposed to buy the flowers for?
Since I never really studied adjectives I can’t tear them apart, but according to Twain, memorizing the various
forms “will make you a candidate for an asylum”.
Another point regarding this language is the sound of it. Few would ever claim that it is pleasant to the ear,
and I have had several Germans ask me something along the line of, “Doesn’t our language sound quite harsh?” My
answer usually is, “Well, uh… since you’ve asked, actually yes!” I cannot ever imagine Khalil Gibran, Robert Frost,
Pablo Neruda, or Rumi weaving their literary tapestries in German. For example, even “I love you” can come out
sounding like a command… “Ich liebe Dich!”.
But let's look on the bright side of things: there are many words in German that are similiar, or even identical,
to English, though they might be pronounced differently. In addition to a few you may have already spotted, there’s:
Steak, Butter, Milch, Joghurt, Salat, Orange, Reis, Kaffee, Tee, Glas, Wein, Bier, Telefon, Foto, Bus, Original,
Radio, Musik, Disco, Zigarette, Kamera, Gangster, Name, Expertise, Kondom, Student, Freund, Baby and lots more.
And there are some German words or expressions that have been adopted by Americans and which are already familiar
to us, like “Kindergarten” and “gesundheit”. So an English speaker learning German already gets a head start with
many words. All they have to do is learn the gender and pronunciation of each word, and then figure out how to
string them all together in a way that makes sense!
More good news is that, as in Spanish, a word generally sounds the way it is spelled. You don’t encounter such
perversions of illogic from English as “through” sounding exactly the same as “threw” ...likewise “close” and “clothes”,
or “read” being pronunced two different ways depending on what tense it is. Of course some of the sounds in German
are difficult to master, and I frequently find my listeners looking at me dumbfounded after I’ve just said something
perfectly... I thought. For me the “ch” sound always seems to come out wrong. You know…as in J.S. Bach? It should
be a bit like clearing your throat, but I usually feel self-conscious trying to pull it off and then I get one
of those “Huh?” looks.
But in general, Germans are thrilled that anyone living here is trying to learn their language (in fact some
of them can get a bit aggressive about insisting on it!), so they usually encourage you and are often more than
happy to correct your mistakes. 
In addition, most Germans can speak English at least passably, if not quite well (exceptions being those quite
old or those who lived in former East Germany). An interesting side note though is, if you ask them, “Sprechen
Sie English?” (Do you speak English?), they’re likely to respond, “a little”, when in fact they probably studied
it for about eight years in school, have traveled some in English-speaking countries, and are probably better at
it than G. W. Bush. (I know, I know, that’s not THAT hard to do.) But when you ask an American if they speak another
language they’ll say, for instance, “Oh yeah, Spanish!”, when it turns out that they took two years of it in high
school about a millenium ago, and can now accomplish little more in Spanish than ordering a beer and asking where
the bathroom is!
There’s a bit of squabbling among various speakers of German regarding the many dialects and accents in this language.
For instance, most Berliners moan about "that horrible Swabian" spoken in the southwestern part of their
country. “I can almost not understand them!”, they’ll exclaim. But then the Swabians bitch about how the Bavarians
in the southeast of Germany speak. The Bavarians, in turn, shake their heads in disbelief at the dialect in the
northwestern Cologne region. Almost all Germans dislike hearing the Austrian version, and they pretty much all
agree that the German that’s spoken in Switzerland is not really German at all. While all this is going on, those
around Hanover sit back smugly and claim that they, and they alone, actually speak "High German". Well,
la di da!
But unless it’s something complicated, I usually manage to get by everywhere with my shitty survival German. Regardless
of what part of Germany I’m in, or even if I’m in Austria or Switzerland, the different dialects make no difference
to me as I pretty much suck everywhere. But… I still usually manage ok in stores and restaurants, and while exchanging
pleasantries and asking and answering basic questions here and there. I often get asked for directions while I’m
walking around or waiting for trains and buses (must be my friendly face, huh?), and I actually amaze myself when
I can assist them in German. But what’s really funny is when I ask a question or order something to eat or drink
in German, and immediately get a response back in English, as if to put us both out our misery! Not exactly a ringing
endorsement of my German skills?
Speaking of survival German... if you’re learning the language, there are three expressions that are essential
to general conversation, and if one listens in when others are speaking you’ll hear them again and again. Learn
them - they are invaluable!
- The first is “genau”, which means “exactly” or “precisely”, as in, “This is our train coming, right?”……..."Genau."
The second is “ach so”, which means “oh” or “I see”, said with a bit of surprise, as in, “The reason I’m running
is that we need to get on this train now or we’ll miss it!”…..…. "Ach so!"
The third is “scheisse” which means “shit”, as in, “There it goes, we just missed our train!!”…….. "Scheisse!!!"
The next language I’ll soon be tackling is Bahasa Indonesian and I am delighted to discover in my research on
it that it’s “a mercifully easy language to pick up - there are no tenses, genders or articles, and sentence structure
is relatively simple.” (Indonesian Handbook). After all the headaches I’ve had with German, I think this is just
what the doctor ordered, don’t you?
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