This long essay is a work of mock philology, one of several appendices to Twain's travel novel, A Tramp Abroad. In it, Twain explains, complains about, and shows how one might improve upon various aspects of the German language. His examples of precisely how the German language is awful include the famed "separable verb" - which allows one to put the first part of a given verb at the beginning - and its second part at the end - of a given clause or sentence .
He also makes fun of the extreme length of certain compound nouns , as well as the many noun and verb forms one must master in order to use German cases properly. As the essay progresses, Twain includes a few hilarious passages that are partly or mostly in German. Nevertheless, the work is easily understandable even by people who don't know any German at all.
This long essay is a work of mock philology, one of several appendices to Twain's travel novel, A Tramp Abroad. In it, Twain explains, complains about, and shows how one might improve upon various aspects of the German language. His examples of precisely how the German language is awful include the famed "separable verb" - which allows one to put the first part of a given verb at the beginning - and its second part at the end - of a given clause or sentence .
He also makes fun of the extreme length of certain compound nouns , as well as the many noun and verb forms one must master in order to use German cases properly. As the essay progresses, Twain includes a few hilarious passages that are partly or mostly in German. Nevertheless, the work is easily understandable even by people who don't know any German at all.
