AMD2 Luyi Chen

I choose to read the article of 'The Awful German Language' written by Mark Twain. People always complain that German is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world. Mark Twain definitely has a more interesting perspective on how difficult German can be.

As he claimed in the article, "Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp." It is difficult for people to memorize the vocabulary because it always changes in different situations. Despite the three genders of words, you also need to be really careful about the norminative and accusative cases as well as the special variations of verbs due to the different subjects. Although I have not yet learnt complicated usage of words, I have already experienced the diffuculty of remembering German words correctly in the previous two tests.

Mark Twain's sarcasm on German language makes me laugh a lot. "German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head." Actually, Mark Twain was just complaining about the impossibility of reading German newspapers for a foriegner. German language prefers to combine different words into a compound of word withouth any orders. Therefore, it is not surprising for me to find some incredibly long words, which will certainly make me confused and annoyed, on German books or newspapers. Another good comment made by Mark Twain is that "the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance". This wrting customs will absolutely cost more difficulty and annoyance for readers to find a verb in a long sentence.

Although Mark Twain made sarcarsms on the complexity of German language, I can feel his love and interests for this troublesome language. He atually has a very good command of German. I hope I can read the German article he wrote in the future.