AMD 4

For AMD 4 I finally got around to reading Mark Twain's The Awful German language, and boy am I glad I did. Twain really nailed it when talking about the various bugaboos of the German language from placing the verb at the end to declensions. I think my favorite quote was the one where he knew a man who would rather decline two drinks then one German adjective! While Twain did discuss some things I didn't recognize (the dative case being one) I found the article on the whole to be very accessible and  almost timeless. It really makes me appreciate Twain and his writing, along with how hard some parts of German are. When reading the article I was struck by how much harder it must have been to learn a language back in Twain's day. When he was talking about what a chore it would be to look up the gender for the word rain I felt a touch guilty. I grumble to myself when I have to pop a word into Google and that poor man had to probably thumb through a huge dictionary. While I appreciated Twain's suggestions for 'fixing' the language I must disagree with him. Yes, some parts of German are frustrating, but really I enjoy some of its idiosyncrasies. I like the idea of the separable and just kicking one part of the verb to the end of the sentence regardless. While Twain was right more then he was wrong I think imposing his changes would really kill some of freshness of the language and would make it too much like English. It's rules and exceptions may be quirky but figuring them out is really some of the fun of learning the 'awful German Language'!