[meteorite-list] Re-2: How do you say dronino?

From: Pete Shugar <pshugar_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:47:44 -0600
Message-ID: <C9D7E97D87EE4CAFB403804A6F49F4F9_at_laptop>

OT, but gut for medicine.
They say that laughter is the best medicine and since I'm getting
over a cold I've never laughed so hard in a long time.
My grandmother tried to teach me Das (oder ist est Die)
German and I swear that's what drove me around the bend.
I never recovered from it
Pete

----- Original Message -----
From: <bernd.pauli at paulinet.de>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 11:26 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Re-2: How do you say dronino?


> Martin wrote: "_at_#!GRMBLGnggnn%&$ !!!!"
>
> Darren opined: "To be fair, EVERYTHING in German sounds like that."
>
> Very off-topic but once again timefor THAT - Please enjoy :-)
>
> The Awful German Language
>
> A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing
> language it is.
> Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing 'cases' where I
> am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself
> into my sentence clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles
> the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain
> bird (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of
> consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this
> question - according to the book - is that the bird is waiting in the
> blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that,
> but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the
> German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is
> the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine - or maybe it
> is feminine - or possibly neuter - it is too much trouble to look, now.
> Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the)
> Regen, according to which gender it may tur
> n out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out
> on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well - then the rain is der
> Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without
> enlargement or discussion - Nomina-tive case; but if this rain is lying
> around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely
> located, it is doing something - that is, resting (which is one of the
> German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into
> the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not
> resting, but is doing something actively - it is falling - to interfere
> with the bird, likely - and this indicates movement -which has the effect
> of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den
> Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I
> answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the
> blacksmith shop 'wegen (on account of) den Regen
> ' Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the
> word 'wegen' drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the
> Genitive case, regardless of consequences - and that therefore this bird
> stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."
> Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the
> distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by
> heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a
> memorandum book. In German a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
> Think what reverence that shows for the turnip, and what disrespect for
> the girl. See how it looks in print. I translate this from a conversation
> in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
>
> Gretchen: "Wilhelm, where is the turnip?"
> Wilhelm: "She has gone to the kitchen."
> Gretchen: "Where is the beautiful English maiden?"
> Wilhelm: "It has gone to the opera."
>
> The Germans have a kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a
> verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter
> and the other hauat the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more
> confusing than that? These things are called 'separable verbs'. The
> German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider
> the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of
> the crime is pleased with his performance. A favourite one is reiste ab,
> which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and
> reduced to English.
> "The trunks being now ready, he de- after kissing his mother and sisters,
> and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in
> simple white muslin with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich
> brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the
> terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor
> aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more
> dearly than life itself, parted."
> Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these
> examples:
>
> Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen
> Alterthumswissenschaften
> Kinderbewahrungsanstalten
> Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen
> Wiederherstellungsbestrebungen
> Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen
>
> These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they
> are not rare; one can open a German newspaper 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.
>
> (From A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain, 1879)
>
>
> To: cynapse at charter.net
> altmann at meteorite-martin.de
> Cc: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>
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Received on Thu 20 Nov 2008 01:47:44 PM PST