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
a certain bird - (it is always inquiring after things
which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody): "Where
is the bird?" Now the answer to this question - according
to the book - is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith
shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would
do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well,
I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin
at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea.
I say to myself, "REGEN (rain) is masculine - or maybe it
is feminine - or possibly neuter - it is too much trouble
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
is masculine. Very well - then THE rain is DER Regen,
if it is simply in the quiescent state of being MENTIONED,
without enlargement or discussion - Nominative case;
but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general
way on the ground, it is then definitely located,
it is DOING SOMETHING - that is, RESTING (which is one
of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and
this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it
DEM Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is
doing something ACTIVELY, - it is falling - to interfere
with the bird, likely - and this indicates MOVEMENT,
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,
regardless of consequences - and therefore this bird stayed in
the blacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens."
N.B. - I was informed, later, by a higher authority,
that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen
DEN Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances,
but that this exception is not extended to anything
BUT rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome.
An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime
and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column;
it contains all the ten parts of speech - not in regular order,
but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed
by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any
dictionary - six or seven words compacted into one,
without joint or seam - that is, without hyphens;
it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects,
each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and
there extra parentheses, making pens with pens:
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