{"id":741,"date":"2009-01-16T10:12:41","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T15:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/?p=741"},"modified":"2009-01-16T10:12:41","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T15:12:41","slug":"the-awful-german-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"The Awful German Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>American author Mark Twain wrote the grippingly hilarious and sometimes sexist &#8220;<a title=\"The Awful German Language\" href=\"http:\/\/www.crossmyt.com\/hc\/linghebr\/awfgrmlg.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Awful German Language<\/a>.&#8221; Ah, the liberation of intellect. This small excerpt deals a feature not present in English. All nouns in German are assigned a gender (male, neutral, or feminine) that effects their usage. With that bit of info masticated upon, read on&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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 overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print &#8212; I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:<\/p>\n<dl>\n<dt><strong>Gretchen:\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Wilhelm, where is the turnip?<\/span><\/strong><\/dt>\n<dt><strong>Wilhelm:\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">She has gone to the kitchen.<\/span><\/strong><\/dt>\n<dt><strong>Gretchen:\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?<\/span><\/strong><\/dt>\n<dt><strong>Wilhelm: <\/strong>It has gone to the opera.<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<p>&#8211;Mark Twain<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American author Mark Twain wrote the grippingly hilarious and sometimes sexist &#8220;The Awful German Language.&#8221; Ah, the liberation of intellect. This small excerpt deals a feature not present in English. All nouns in German are assigned a gender (male, neutral, or feminine) that effects their usage. With that bit of info masticated upon, read on&#8230; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/?p=741\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Awful German Language<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,12],"tags":[525,200,460],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deutsch","category-education","category-genius","tag-deutsch","tag-german","tag-twain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenfager.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}