(If you''re patient enough to go through this article,you''ll have a lot of fun!
!

The Awful German Language
by Mark Twain


A little learning makes the whole world kin.

I went often to look at the collection of curiosities
in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper
of it with my German.　I spoke entirely in that language.　
He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while
he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique";
and wanted to add it to his museum.　

If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art,
he would also have known that it would break any
collector to buy it.　Harris and I had been hard at
work on our German during several weeks at that time,
and although we had made good progress, it had been
accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance,
for three of our teachers had died in the mean time.　
A person who has not studied German can form no idea
of what a perplexing language it is.　

Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod
and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp.　
One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most
helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured
a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid
the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech,
he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make
careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his
eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the
rule than instances of it.　So overboard he goes again,
to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand.　
Such has been, and continues to be, my experience.　
Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing
"cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant
preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with
an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground
from under me.　For instance, my book inquires after

which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody)"Where

to the book

is feminine

to look now.　Therefore, it is either DER (the) Regen,
or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which
gender it may turn out to be when I look.　In the interest
of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it

if it is simply in the quiescent state of being MENTIONED,

with the bird, likely

which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case
and changing DEM Regen into DEN Regen." Having completed
the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up
confidently and state in German that the bird is staying
in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen."
Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark
that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence,
it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case,