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All right, so the way some people speak German CAN make it sound like angry men chewing celery. Film clips of Adolf Hitler's speeches on the History Channel notwithstanding, you've got to admit that German is a darned sexy language. Mark Twain, in his brilliant essay, "The Awful German Language, describes it this way: |
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"There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects -- with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the sound of the words is correct -- it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart." |
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I can hear the snickers bubbling from your collective nasal cavities this very second; hush. Really, you have to concede that when it comes to expressing words of beauty, English is soundly outstripped by both German and Spanish. For example, If you speak Spanish, repeat this phrase to yourself six times: Te quiero*. (If you don't speak Spanish, it's pronounced "tay KYAIR-o; do your best imitation of Antonio Banderas, soften your Ts and flip your Rs.)
Te quiero te quiero te quiero te quiero te quiero te quiero.
Isn't that lovely?
Once you get into the rhythm of speaking Spanish, simply making up sentences is a joy. The words tumble out of your mouth like a river over smooth rocks; a simple word like porque (with all Rs flipped to the utmost and the emphasis on the second syllable) rolls like a stream. You find yourself wanting to begin every sentence in Spanish with the word because. I was helping a friend with his linguistics homework on UC patio the other day and was happy because I got to tell him that the table was green.* |
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German (from what little I know of it) operates on a wholly different plane of sound; its beauty lies in cut and clip and delicate precision, where Spanish glosses over every possible consonant. If you've never heard someone with a pleasant voice speak German** then try to imagine English being spoken by, say, that yummy Naked Chef guy on the Food Channel.
Mmm.
What I like best about German is what some people hate the most: the aspirants. Consonant combos like sp and st and (my personal favorite) ch awake the ear; English spoken by your average American teenager can sound downright sloppy by comparison. You can hear the shape of a person's lips, tongue and teeth in German; every vowel and consonant is fraught with personality. It makes simple sentences like Wiederholen Sie, bitte or Welche Farbe hat der Bleistift?* memorable events in my mind. |
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Because of this, as painful as they are to learn, some of my favorite words in German are pronouns. Ich, dich, sich, mich: I like them all. Even as awful a sentence as Ich liebe dich nicht*... well, your heart's broken, but at least it sounded pretty.
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**Or better yet, go here: Die Fantastischen Vier. This is a popular rap group in Germany that I've kind of grown to like; I particularly recommend you listen to tracks 7, 10, and 12. They're strange-looking German men who cuss a lot, but for some reason I really like their speaking voices.
Mmm...yummy. |
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*I love you |
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*La mesa es verde. |
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*Repeat, please; What color is the pencil? |
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*I don't love you |
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Don't get me wrong, though; this is not to say that English doesn't have some serious merits of its own. I am an English major, meaning that my chief purpose and occupation in life is to look at lots of English words and then communicate meaningful thoughts about them using lots of other English words. As this is the language I know best, it's easier for me to come up with examples off the top of my head of words I like and don't like.*
I am currently in the midst of reading King Lear for my English 422 class, and I have to say that I would be hard pressed to find a man who could work with the flavor of words as well as Shakespeare. I like his tragedies better than his comedies (that might change if I can get into Eng 421 next semester), and I especially enjoy his ability to encapsulate human emotion with an economy of words. It's even better that it's all in Elizabethan/King James English; I have of late grown tired of the world's plethora of wannabe neo-Helen Steiner Rices and e.e. cummingses (opposite extremes, all-- it's not necessarily poetry just because it scans or rhymes, and neither is it poetry just because you write in free verse with misspelling and flagrant disregard for capitalization).
My goal as an English major is to explore the flavor of the English language; I have to take words and phrases and whole sentences and roll them around in my mouth and my brain like a Tootsie pop. It's easier to do this with German, because I have not yet achieved first-tier knowledge of the language; it is less so with Spanish, because I am more fluent, and words and phrases have started to lose sound as they acquire meaning. English is the hardest of all; words are immediate pictures and concepts in my mind and not just sounds, and so I have to stem (I cannot wholly mute) the torrent of associations and images in my head when I analyse the language of a text. It's fun, though; it's a challenge! |
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| *it's here (although still under construction)-- Becky's favorite words and phrases!!! |
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| Writing effectively is even more of a challenge. It's one thing to appraise a good wine; quite another to learn the process of winemaking yourself. My buddy Em and I were discussing this the other night; it is (we concluded) like writing music, where if you want to get this feeling across, then only this key, this chord, this inversion, this note will do. The second half of my quest as an English major is the search for the perfect word-- it has to carry the right connotation, fit in the rhythm of the sentence-- it just has to taste right, like a seasoning in a soup. There is no one perfect word, just as there is no one perfect seasoning, but the joy of it is in the looking and in the tasting. |
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