"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."
- Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language" (1880)
There are actually a number of reasons that I want to learn German. For starters, I am someone with a great interest in foreign languages. I talk at length in a previous post about my experience in learning French and Spanish. (If you haven't read this previous post, you might enjoy reading it first before you read this. Here's a link that leads to it.)
Mark Twain
The negative perception of German among some
But why German, rather than some other language? To be sure, the desire to learn German seems strange to some. It's perceived by many as the ugly language, and Mark Twain once wrote a tongue-in-cheek essay called "The Awful German Language." A girl in my first year of high school French said that telling someone "I love you" in German would sound ugly; and insulting someone in French would sound beautiful. I'm not completely sure why Americans perceive these languages this way, but it seems quite clear that they do. French is perceived as a romantic language (especially by women), and German is perceived as an angry language.
Charlie Chaplin spoofs Hitler speech in his movie "The Great Dictator" (1940)
The complicated legacy of German history
I suspect some of the modern dislike of the German language has something to do with its being spoken by the Nazis. To be sure, Nazism is an important part of German history, and I will not try to minimize its ugliness. But there is more to German history than the First and Second World Wars. This is also the language of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven; of many other classical composers; and of "Silent Night." This is a language with a strong intellectual tradition; of achievements in philosophy, science, and engineering. And this is a language that (surprisingly to many people) is remarkably similar to English. English has similarity to the Romance languages because of its borrowing of words from Latin and French, but English is actually classified as a Germanic language.
Mozart
Bach
Beethoven
English is a Germanic language
Learning Germanic words will help me to understand the history of English, which is part of the reason that I wanted to learn it. If you've heard what modern scholars think Old English sounds like, it actually sounds somewhat similar to modern German. Germans today would have an easy time learning Old English, and English speakers have a remarkably easy time learning German - easier than they would with Spanish or French. This might be part of why German is actually the third most popular foreign language in the United States (behind Spanish and French).
Practical reasons for learning German
But you might be wondering why a practical person like me (who majored in business) would want to learn German for. One reason is that it's a hobby, which I would want to do even without practical benefits. But another is that we do a significant amount of trade with the European Union (more than with any single country), and the EU tends to use three languages as working languages - English, French, and German. I already speak the first two, so I want to focus on German now, which is the most important business language in Europe besides English.
European Union flag
Comparing German to other business languages (like Japanese and Chinese)
It might quickly be pointed out that we do a lot more trade with China. And it's true - of the languages that I don't already speak, the most useful for an American would be Japanese or Mandarin Chinese (especially the latter). But German isn't far behind Japanese, and I have a few other reasons to focus on German, rather than these two languages. One is that German is a lot easier for an American to learn than the languages of Asia (not a small consideration for me). Another is that German combines well with the other three modern languages that I speak (English, French, and Spanish), because all of these languages are European languages. (I initially learned French and Spanish because of their importance in North America, but they are all native to Europe, and are still useful today in that region.)
Propaganda painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps, in what is today Switzerland (a German-speaking country)
My experience with European history
And there is one other practical reason, which is that I know a fair amount about European history, having both studied it on my own, and taken three Western Civilization courses in college. I could actually put this knowledge to use in Europe, whereas I could not do so in Asia. Outside of some 20th-century history, I don't know much more about Japan or China than what I've seen in books and documentaries; whereas I'm reasonably well-educated about European history. German would nicely complement what I already know, and enable me to be something approaching an expert about European business, with my business degree figuring in prominently here.
Karl Marx
Reading Karl Marx in German
But the most important reason is one that is not so practical - and one which those familiar with me and my politics might find somewhat strange, coming from me. This is my wanting to read Karl Marx in the original German. I was basically an economics minor - technically a certificate, but it's almost the same thing - and so it is important for me to know Marxist arguments. If you're wondering if I agree with Marx, let me clarify that I have written thousands of words against communism (linked to here), and that I just want to do this for opposition study. Nonetheless, I will keep an open mind whenever I read anything he wrote, and become educated about communism in the process. Hopefully, it will enable me to better argue against it, and win some political debates with Marx's modern disciples.
So these are some reasons that I want to add German to my repertoire of languages. I hope this has been at least somewhat interesting to those curious about why I'm interested in the language.
(Note: I don't anticipate being able to learn this for a while; but one day, I hope to do this.)
If you liked this post, you might also like:
Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and the "labor theory of value"
Division of Germany during the Cold War (experiments with communism)
Part of a series about
Modern languages
Why I want to learn German
Note: These posts do not have to be read in any particular order. Since time periods overlap, there isn’t much chronological order to observe here.
See also this series about
My own experiences
Note: These posts do not have to be read in any particular order. Since time periods overlap, there isn’t much chronological order to observe here.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment