[Leica] A S2 blog entry - German

[datamaster at northcoastphotos.com (Gary Todoroff)]

At 01:58 PM 3/15/2010, you wrote:
>In Germany, I'm always surprised to find a 
>sentence (Satz) at the bottom of my coffee cup. 
>Trouble is I can never read it. Mark Twain 
>certainly had the German language's number, I'd 
>say. There are times in Germany that people 
>speak of a train (Zug) being in the room with us, and there isn't.?
>I'm sure Germans can speak of strange things in English as well.
>In humor,
>Doug

This Mark Twain quote was posted recently in the 
blog of our Eureka Rotary Exchange student, who 
is spending his year in Vettlehoven north of Frankfurt:


Mark Twain on German

?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.?

Hochactungsvoll,
Gary Todoroff