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: finally,
all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together
between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed
in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other
in the middle of the last line of it - AFTER WHICH COMES
THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man
has been talking about; and after the verb - merely by way
of ornament, as far as I can make out - the writer shovels
in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN,"
or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.
I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the
flourish to a man's signature - not necessary, but pretty.
German books are easy enough to read when you hold them
before the looking-glass or stand on your head - so as
to reverse the construction - but I think that to learn
to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing
which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
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