In The German It Is True That By Some Oversight Of The Inventor
Of The Language, A Woman Is A Female; But A Wife (Weib)
Is Not - Which Is Unfortunate.
A Wife, here, has no sex;
she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish
is HE, his
Scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither.
To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description;
that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse.
A German speaks of an Englishman as the ENGLAENDER; to change
the sex, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman
- ENGLAENDERINN. That seems descriptive enough, but still
it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the
word with that article which indicates that the creature
to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die
Englaenderinn," - which means "the she-Englishwoman."
I consider that that person is over-described.
Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great
number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he
finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer
to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which
it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it."
When he even frames a German sentence in his mind,
with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works
up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use
- the moment he begins to speak his tongue files the track
and all those labored males and females come out as "its."
And even when he is reading German to himself, he always
calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way:
TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]
2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and
ancient English) fashion.
It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail,
how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along,
and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife,
it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket
of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales
as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale
has even got into its Eye. and it cannot get her out.
It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes
out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm.
And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she
will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin,
she holds her in her Mouth - will she swallow her? No,
the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and
rescues the Fin - which he eats, himself, as his Reward.
O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket;
he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the
doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she
attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot - she burns him up,
all but the big Toe, and even SHE is partly consumed;
and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues;
she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys IT; she attacks
its Hand and destroys HER also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg
and destroys HER also; she attacks its Body and consumes HIM;
she wreathes herself about its Heart and IT is consumed;
next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder;
now she reaches its Neck - He goes; now its Chin
- IT goes; now its Nose - SHE goes. In another Moment,
except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more.
Time presses - is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy,
joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas,
the generous she-Female is too late: where now is
the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings,
it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it
for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering
Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him
up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear
him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises
again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square
responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of
having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him
in Spots.
- - - - -
There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun
business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue.
I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look
and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning
are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner.
It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in
the German. Now there is that troublesome word VERMAEHLT:
to me it has so close a resemblance - either real or
fancied - to three or four other words, that I never know
whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married;
until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means
the latter. There are lots of such words and they are
a great torment. To increase the difficulty there are
words which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not;
but they make just as much trouble as if they did.
For instance, there is the word VERMIETHEN (to let,
to lease, to hire); and the word VERHEIRATHEN (another way
of saying to marry). I heard of an Englishman who knocked
at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best
German he could command, to "verheirathen" that house.
Then there are some words which mean one thing when you
emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very
different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable.
For instance, there is a word which means a runaway,
or the act of glancing through a book, according to the
placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies
to ASSOCIATE with a man, or to AVOID him, according to
where you put the emphasis - and you can generally depend
on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble.
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