Re: CHAT: An introduction
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 5, 2003, 0:15 |
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On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 12:43:26AM +0200, Christian Thalmann wrote:
> Ah yes... I remember it. It contains a few very good
> observations, but 90% of it is utter twaddle proving only
> that Twain's knowledge of German sucked. His rant about
> the cases of German is positively grotesque. ;-)
You read too much about the author from his writing. By all accounts,
Twain actually spoke excellent German. He merely retained his ability
to look at it from an ignorant English-speaker's perspective and
write about it in a funny way.
I love his application of German capitalization rules, pronoun genders,
compound tendencies, and syntax to English. Hysterical stuff.
Much better than "Das Machine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken" etc. :)
-Mark