"Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are s.e.xless, dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats included, of course; a person"s mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male s.e.x, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and _not_ according to the s.e.x of the individual who wears it--for in Germany all the women wear either male heads or s.e.xless ones; a person"s nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female s.e.x; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven"t any s.e.x at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a man may _think_ he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.
In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not--which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no s.e.x; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is _he_, his scales are _she_, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as s.e.xless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the _Englunnder_; to change the s.e.x, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman--_Englunderinn_. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Englunderinn,"--which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.
Well, after the student has learned the s.e.x of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her,"
which it has been always accustomed to refer to as "it." When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use--the moment he begins to speak his tongue flies the track and all those labored males and females come out as "its." And even when he is reading German to himself, he always calls those things "it," whereas he ought to read in this way:
TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]
2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and ancient English) fashion.
It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, she holds her in her Mouth--will she swallow her? No, the Fishwife"s brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin--which he eats, himself, as his Reward. O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she attacks the helpless Fishwife"s Foot--she burns him up, all but the big Toe, and even _She_ is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues; she attacks the Fishwife"s Leg and destroys _it_; she attacks its Hand and destroys _Her_ also; she attacks the Fishwife"s Leg and destroys _Her_ also; she attacks its Body and consumes _Him_; she wreathes herself about its Heart and _it_ is consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment _She_ is a Cinder; now she reaches its Neck--He goes; now its Chin--_it_ goes; now its Nose--_She_ goes. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more. Time presses--is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes!
But alas, the generous she-Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square responsible s.e.x, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of a.s.sorted s.e.xes scattered all over him in Spots.
There, now, the reader can see for himself that this p.r.o.noun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in the German. Now there is that troublesome word _vermuhlt_: to me it has so close a resemblance--either real or fancied--to three or four other words, that I never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means the latter. There are lots of such words and they are a great torment. To increase the difficulty there are words which _seem_ to resemble each other, and yet do not; but they make just as much trouble as if they did. For instance, there is the word _vermiethen_ (to let, to lease, to hire); and the word _verheirathen_ (another way of saying to marry).
I heard of an Englishman who knocked at a man"s door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best German he could command, to "verheirathen" that house. Then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there is a word which means a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book, according to the placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies to _a.s.sociate_ with a man, or to _avoid_ him, according to where you put the emphasis--and you can generally depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble.
There are some exceedingly useful words in this language. _Schlag_, for example; and _zug_. There are three-quarters of a column of _schlags_ in the dictonary, and a column and a half of _zugs_. The word _schlag_ means Blow, Stroke, Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar, Coin, Stamp, Kind, Sort, Manner, Way, Apoplexy, Wood-cutting, Enclosure, Field, Forest-clearing. This is its simple and _exact_ meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; but there are ways by which you can set it free, so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. You can begin with _schlag-ader_, which means artery, and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet to _schlag-wa.s.ser_, which means bilge-water--and including _schlag-mutte_R, which means mother-in-law.
Just the same with _zug_. Strictly speaking, _zug_ means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Pa.s.sage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which it does _not_ mean--when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been discovered yet.
One cannot overestimate the usefulness of _schlag_ and _zug_. Armed just with these two, and the word _also_, what cannot the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word _also_ is the equivalent of the English phrase "You know," and does not mean anything at all--in _talk_, though it sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his mouth an _also_ falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites one in two that was trying to _get_ out.
Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three n.o.ble words, is master of the situation. Let him talk right along, fearlessly; let him pour his indifferent German forth, and when he lacks for a word, let him heave a _schlag_ into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug, but if it doesn"t let him promptly heave a _zug_ after it; the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if, by a miracle, they _should_ fail, let him simply say _also_! and this will give him a moment"s chance to think of the needful word. 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. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to a German or an English conversation as to scatter it full of "Also"s" or "You knows."
In my note-book I find this entry:
July 1.--In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was successfully removed from a patient--a North German from near Hamburg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community.
That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the most curious and notable features of my subject--the length of German words.
Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and see them marching majestically across the page--and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhangigkeitserklarungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and enn.o.bles that literary landscape--but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere--so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed. They are compound words with the hyphens left out. The various words used in building them are in the dictionary, but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning at last, but it is a tedious and hara.s.sing business. I have tried this process upon some of the above examples. "Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendship demonstrations," which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations of friendship." "Unabhangigkeitserklarungen" seems to be "Independencedeclarations," which is no improvement upon "Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see.
"Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be "General-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I can get at it--a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for "meetings of the legislature,"
I judge. We used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but it has gone out now. We used to speak of a thing as a "never-to-be-forgotten" circ.u.mstance, instead of cramping it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and then going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened. In those days we were not content to embalm the thing and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument over it.
But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out, in the German fashion. This is the shape it takes: instead of saying "Mr. Simmons, clerk of the county and district courts, was in town yesterday," the new form puts it thus: "Clerk of the County and District Courts Simmons was in town yesterday." This saves neither time nor ink, and has an awkward sound besides. One often sees a remark like this in our papers: "_Mrs_.
a.s.sistant District Attorney Johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season." That is a case of really unjustifiable compounding; because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers a t.i.tle on Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to. But these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous and dismal German system of piling jumbled compounds together. I wish to submit the following local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of ill.u.s.tration:
"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno"clock Night, the inthistownstandingtavern called "The Wagoner" was downburnt. When the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork"s Nest reached, flew the parent Storks away. But when the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest _itself_ caught Fire, straightway plunged the quickreturning Mother-Stork into the Flames and died, her Wings over her young ones outspread."
Even the c.u.mbersome German construction is not able to take the pathos out of that picture--indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. This item is dated away back yonder months ago. I could have used it sooner, but I was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. I am still waiting.
"_Also_!" If I had not shown that the German is a difficult language, I have at least intended to do so. I have heard of an American student who was asked how he was getting along with his German, and who answered promptly: "I am not getting along at all. I have worked at it hard for three level months, and all I have got to show for it is one solitary German phrase--"_zwei glas_"" (two gla.s.ses of beer). He paused for a moment, reflectively; then added with feeling: "But I"ve got that _solid_!"
And if I have not also shown that German is a hara.s.sing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certain German word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer--the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. This was the word _damit_. It was only the _sound_ that helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away and died.
3. It merely means, in its general sense, "herewith."
I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, h.e.l.l. These are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display and not for superior usefulness in a.n.a.lyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a battle which was called by so tame a term as a _schlacht_? Or would not a comsumptive feel too much bundled up, who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song word _gewitter_ was employed to describe? And observe the strongest of the several German equivalents for explosion--_ausbruch_. Our word Toothbrush is more powerful than that. It seems to me that the Germans could do worse than import it into their language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. The German word for h.e.l.l--Hoelle--sounds more like _h.e.l.ly_ than anything else; therefore, how necessarily chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told in German to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling insulted?
Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. The capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far before this virtue stands another--that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how any German word is p.r.o.nounced without having to ask; whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, "What does B, O, W, spell?" we should be obliged to reply, "n.o.body can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of one"s head, or the forward end of a boat."
There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the pa.s.sing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpa.s.singly rich and affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the _sound_ of the words is correct--it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart.
The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. They repeat it several times, if they choose. That is wise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish.
Repet.i.tion may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse.
There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind of person. I have shown that the German language needs reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it. At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions. Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but I have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me.
In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case. It confuses the plurals; and, besides, n.o.body ever knows when he is in the Dative case, except he discover it by accident--and then he does not know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he is ever going to get out of it again. The Dative case is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it.
In the next place, I would move the Verb further up to the front. You may load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present German range--you only cripple it. So I insist that this important part of speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye.
Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous way. [4]
1. "Verdammt," and its variations and enlargements, are words which have plenty of meaning, but the _sounds_ are so mild and ineffectual that German ladies can use them without sin. German ladies who could not be induced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip out one of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses or don"t like the soup. It sounds about as wicked as our "My gracious."
German ladies are constantly saying, "Ach! Gott!" "Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Herr Gott" "Der Herr Jesus!" etc. They think our ladies have the same custom, perhaps; for I once heard a gentle and lovely old German lady say to a sweet young American girl: "The two languages are so alike--how pleasant that is; we say "Ach! Gott!" you say "G.o.dd.a.m.n.""
Fourthly, I would reorganizes the s.e.xes, and distribute them accordingly to the will of the creator. This as a tribute of respect, if nothing else.
Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel.
Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration. This sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. They are, therefore, an offense, and should be discarded.