Amanda Knop- AMD 2

I decided to read Mark Twain's, "The Awful German Language" because I remembered Hartmut mentioning it in one of the video lectures. He stated that Twain studied the German language extensively, so he had the right to make fun of the language. Even though I've only taken German for a month now, I have already noticed some of the aspects of the language that he writes about in his essay.

One of the main points that Twain makes is that a lot of rules in the German language have a long list of exceptions. So much so, that there are enough exceptions to completely disprove the rule completely.
Reading his explanation made me kind of nervous to study more German because it did sound so confusing. However, I know that Twain was most likely exaggerating for humor.

I thought that Twain's explanation of separable verbs was very funny. Because the second half of the verb comes at the very end of the sentence, it is easy to exaggerate the silliness of this rule. Twain writes a sentence that is three lines long and emphasizes the space between the first and second part of the verb. The rule seems rather silly when put in this context.

Also humorous was Twain's account of the masculine/feminine/neutral gender given to words. It is completely at random. He states that it makes no sense why a female would be neutral, but a turnip would be feminine. He also states that because the parts of the human body are so mixed in their genders of the German language, someone might think he or she is a man or a woman, only to end up confused. I thought that Twain's view of this was entertaining to read.

Overall, I would recommend that other German students read this, because it is humorous and relatable.  Luckily, Twain's "frustration" with the language didn't make me want to stop learning the language, but introduced me to some of the funny quirks of German.