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The Awful German Language
"The Awful German Language" is an 1880 essay by Mark Twain published as Appendix D in ''A Tramp Abroad''. The essay is a humorous exploration of the frustrations a native speaker of English has with learning German as a second language. Background Twain made his first unsuccessful attempt to learn German in 1850 at age fifteen. He resumed his study 28 years later in preparation for a trip to Europe. Upon his arrival in Germany, the fruit of this recent scholarship was attested to in the advice of a friend: "Speak in German, Mark. Some of these people may understand English."Potsdam 2004 pp. 315–316 During this 1878 stay in Germany, Twain had a dream in which, according to his notebook, "all bad foreigners went to German Heaven—couldn't talk and wished they had gone to the other place." "The Awful German Language" was published in the second volume of Twain's ''A Tramp Abroad'', 1880, as appendix D. Gunnar Magnusson describes the work as "Twain's most famous philological essay ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include '' The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and its sequel, '' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), the latter of which has often been called the " Great American Novel". Twain also wrote '' A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (1889) and '' Pudd'nhead Wilson'' (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for ''Tom Sawyer'' and ''Huckleberry Finn''. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called ''conjugation'', and one can refer to the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, participles, prepositions and postpositions, numerals, articles, etc., as '' declension''. An inflection expresses grammatical categories with affixation (such as prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix, and transfix), apophony (as Indo-European ablaut), or other modifications. For example, the Latin verb ', meaning "I will lead", includes the suffix ', expressing person (first), number (singular), and tense-mood (future indicative or present subjunctive). The use of this suffix is an inflection. In contrast, in the English clause "I will lead", the word ''lead'' is not inflected for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Reform
Language reform is a kind of language planning by widespread change to a language. The typical methods of language reform are simplification and linguistic purism. Simplification regularises vocabulary, grammar, or spelling. Purism aligns the language with a form which is deemed 'purer'. Language reforms are intentional changes to language; this article does not cover natural language change, such as the Great Vowel Shift. Simplification By far the most common language reform is simplification. The most common simplification is spelling reform, but inflection, syntax, vocabulary and word formation can also be targets for simplification. For example, in English, there are many prefixes which mean "the opposite of", e.g. ''un-'', ''in-'', ''a(n)-'', ''dis-'', and ''de-''. A language reform might propose to replace the redundant prefixes with one, such as ''un-''. Purification Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the prescriptive practice of recognising one form of a la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays By Mark Twain
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's ''An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Deutscher (linguist)
Guy Deutscher ( he, גיא דויטשר; born 1969 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli linguist. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester and was a professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He received an undergraduate degree in mathematics at University of Cambridge, before going on to earn a Ph.D in linguistics there. After that he undertook research in Historical Linguistics at St John's College, Cambridge. Deutscher is the father of Alma Deutscher, a child prodigy composer and musician. Awards and honours *2011 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and ..., shortlist, ''Through the Language Glass'' Selected works Books * * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fishwife
A fishwife, fish-fag or fishlass is a woman who sells fish. Some wives and daughters of fishermen were notoriously loud and foul-mouthed, as noted in the expression, ''To swear like a fishwife'' as they sold fish in the marketplace. One reason for their outspokenness is that their wares were highly perishable and so lost value if not sold quickly. Also, having to manage alone while their menfolk were away fishing for extended periods, they needed to become strong and self-sufficient. Fishwives in fishing villages such as Cullercoats and Newhaven were noted for their beauty, hardiness and industry and were celebrated by artists and royalty. In this context, the word ''wife'' means ''woman'' rather than ''married woman'', from the Old English ''wif'' (woman). Billingsgate London's traditional fish market was frequented by such types who were known as "''the wives of Billingsgate''". "''They dressed in strong 'stuff' gowns and quilted petticoats; their hair, caps and bonne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turnips
The turnip or white turnip ('' Brassica rapa'' subsp. ''rapa'') is a root vegetable commonly grown in temperate climates worldwide for its white, fleshy taproot. The word ''turnip'' is a compound of ''turn'' as in turned/rounded on a lathe and ''neep'', derived from Latin ''napus'', the word for the plant. Small, tender varieties are grown for human consumption, while larger varieties are grown as feed for livestock. In Northern England, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and parts of Canada (Quebec, Newfoundland, Manitoba and the Maritimes), the word ''turnip'' (or ''neep'') often refers to rutabaga, also known as ''swede'', a larger, yellow root vegetable in the same genus (''Brassica''). Description The most common type of turnip is mostly white-skinned apart from the upper , which protrude above the ground and are purple or red or greenish where the sun has hit. This above-ground part develops from stem tissue, but is fused with the root. The interior flesh is entirely white. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called ''gender''; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the ''genders'' of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each; many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex. Gender systems are used in approximately one half of the world's languages. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words." Overview Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. #Gender contras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interlinear Gloss
In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (annotation), gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When glossed, each line of the original text acquires one or more corresponding lines of transcription known as an interlinear text or interlinear glossed text (IGT)interlinear for short. Such glosses help the reader follow the relationship between the source text and its translation, and the structure of the original language. In its simplest form, an interlinear gloss is simply a literal, word-for-word translation of the source text. History Interlinear glosses have been used for a variety of purposes over a long period of time. One common usage has been to annotate bilingual textbooks for language education. This sort of interlinearization serves to help make the meaning of a source text explicit without attempting to formally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Tramp Abroad
''A Tramp Abroad'' is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created for the book, and based on his closest friend, Joseph Twichell), through central and southern Europe. While the stated goal of the journey is to walk most of the way, the men find themselves using other forms of transport as they traverse the continent. The book is the fourth of Mark Twain's six travel books published during his lifetime and is often thought to be an unofficial sequel to the first one, '' The Innocents Abroad'' (1869). As the two men make their way through Germany, the Alps, and Italy, they encounter situations made all the more humorous by their reactions to them. The narrator (Twain) plays the part of the American tourist of the time, believing that he understands all that he sees, but in reality understanding none of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthetic Language
A synthetic language uses inflection or agglutination to express syntactic relationships within a sentence. Inflection is the addition of morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to that word, while agglutination is the combination of two or more morphemes into one word. The information added by morphemes can include indications of a word's grammatical category, such as whether a word is the subject or object in the sentence. Morphology can be either relational or derivational. While a derivational morpheme changes the lexical categories of words, an inflectional morpheme does not. In the first example below, the adjective ''fast'' followed by the suffix ''-er'' yields ''faster'', which is still an adjective. However, the verb ''teach'' followed by the suffix ''-er'' yields ''teacher'', which is a noun. The first case is an example of inflection and the latter derivation. * ''fast'' (adjective, positive) vs. ''faster'' (adjective, comparative) * ''teach'' (ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analytic Language
In linguistic typology, an analytic language is a language that conveys relationships between words in sentences primarily by way of ''helper'' words ( particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to using inflections (changing the form of a word to convey its role in the sentence). For example, the English-language phrase "The cat chases the ball" conveys the fact that the cat is acting on the ball ''analytically'' via word order. This can be contrasted to synthetic languages, which rely heavily on inflections to convey word relationships (e.g., the phrases "The cat chase''s'' the ball" and "The cat chase''d'' the ball" convey different time frames via changing the form of the word ''chase''). Most languages are not purely analytic, but many rely primarily on analytic syntax. Typically, analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio, especially with respect to inflectional morphemes. A grammatical construction can similarly be ''analytic'' if it uses unbo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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