Re: parseable syntax question

--- Nokta Kanto <red5_2@...> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 09:01:49 EDT, J Y S Czhang
<snip>
> >    - Same goes with SOV or "Reverse Polish
> Notation" according to others
> >(including Wikipedia)
>
> Um, I don't think both VSO and SOV can be most
> readable :) I'd be inclined
> to prefer VSO because I think the verb is more
> important. Yeah, I'm biased.
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 inclosed
in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra
parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor
parentheses, making pens within 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 in "The Aweful German Language"