On Oct 31, 6:02 am, deadrat <
a...@b.com> wrote:
"There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An
average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive
curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten
parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly
of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be
found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one,
without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of
fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis
of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with
pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed
together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed
in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle
of the last line of it -- AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out
for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the
verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the
writer shovels in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HABEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or
words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that
this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's
signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough
to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your
head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to learn
to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always
remain an impossibility to a foreigner. "
Mark Twain