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The Awful German Language Audiobook
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(3.07) - 221 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
Mark Twain’s classic satire on the German language. A must listen for anybody learning German or living in a German-speaking country.
“The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can anyone conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called ‘separable verbs’. The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance.”
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"I love my mother tounge. This essay dwells on all those little absurdities that make it so loveable. If you learn German, read it, you will find a soulmate in your difficulties. If you are German, read it, it makes you feel grateful that you don't have to learn it... ;-)"
— Ines (5 out of 5 stars)
The Awful German Language Listener Reviews
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" It was ok. I didn't find it all that humorous as I was expecting. There were some funny parts as he pokes at the German language while ignoring English's own follies, but overall I just didn't really enjoy it. "
— Josh, 1/17/2014 -
" It's a funny little mockery session on the frustrations of the German language. "
— Aaron, 1/6/2014 -
" One of the funniest essays ever written. "
— Arthur, 12/9/2013 -
" For anyone who has ever been forced to take German as a foreign language in high school. "
— Sandy, 12/5/2013 -
" I was expecting more a bit comedy and absurdity from Twain. His inspiration seems more academic then comedic. Second year German classes should read this book as an introduction to the course, where the subtleties can be thoroughly appreciated. "
— Slightly, 9/24/2013 -
" This is a funny little essay by Mark Twain, especially if you have some familiarity with the German Language "
— Lucky, 9/11/2013 -
" I read it in a bilingual version with the German translation on the page immediately opposite Twain's original. Highly recommended to all German and English speakers :-) "
— Ziggy, 9/1/2013 -
" Sehr lustig! "
— Janet, 7/29/2013 -
" Very funny to read about somebody's struggles to learn German, and find out that we agree on many 'problems' of the German language. I especially like the phrase that German should become a dead language, since only the dead have enough time to learn it... "
— Irene, 7/20/2013 -
" Listened to the audiobook at LibriVox. "
— Georgiana, 7/8/2013 -
" If you know a little of german, you will appreciate this book, Marc Twain list the different things of the german grammar that he dislikes or finds annoying. Quite funny. "
— Gustavo, 6/29/2013 -
" "It's funny cause it's true!" "
— Mihai, 5/20/2013 -
" For those of us who once tried to learn to speak German, Twain's perspective is riotously funny. He doesn't miss any of the problems that those who speak English as a native language run into. Not one. The pronoun translation is particularly revealing. "
— Maria, 5/17/2013 -
" A wonderful polemic on written and spoken German. Fortunately most journalists and authors in our time avoid Twain 's harshest points of critique ;-) "
— Thomas, 5/6/2013 -
" So far, very funny albeit mostly observational humour. "
— Ty, 4/30/2013 -
" Beatiful sarcasm, I love Twain 's style and the way he explains his point of view about how awful the German language really is. "
— Iliyana, 3/20/2013
About Mark Twain
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910), was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He attended school briefly and then at age thirteen became a full-time apprentice to a local printer. When his older brother Orion established the Hannibal Journal, Samuel became a compositor for that paper and then, for a time, an itinerant printer. With a commission to write comic travel letters, he traveled down the Mississippi. Smitten with the riverboat life, he signed on as an apprentice to a steamboat pilot. After 1859, he became a licensed pilot, but two years later the Civil War put an end to the steam-boat traffic.
In 1861, he and his brother traveled to the Nevada Territory where Samuel became a writer for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and there, on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous account with the pseudonym Mark Twain. The name was a river man’s term for water “two fathoms deep” and thus just barely safe for navigation.
In 1870 Twain married and moved with his wife to Hartford, Connecticut. He became a highly successful lecturer in the United States and England, and he continued to write.
About Cathy Dobson
Cathy Dobson is the author of Planet Germany and a narrator of audiobooks.