A Tramp Abroad eBook

The Germans have another 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 half at 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 favorite 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.”

However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs.  One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it.  Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out.  For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them.  Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six—­and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that.  But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.  This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Now observe the Adjective.  Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could.  When we wish to speak of our “good friend or friends,” in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German tongue it is different.  When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it.  It is as bad as Latin.  He says, for instance: 

SINGULAR

Nominative—­Mein gutER Freund, my good friend. 
Genitives—­MeinES GutEN FreundES, of my good friend. 
Dative—­MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my good friend. 
Accusative—­MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend.

PLURAL

N.—­MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends.  G.—­MeinER gutEN FreundE, of my good friends.  D.—­MeinEN gutEN FreundEN, to my good friends.  A.—­MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends.