The Aweful German Language (21/01/03)

This lecture was not your average lecture on discussing how terrible the German language is (as the title might allow us to believe). Instead Mr Horst Trossbach walked us through Marc Twain’s wonderful book (I like to refer it as a satire for his sarcastic nevertheless excellent approach) on the “Aweful German Language”. Mr Trossbach read us the introduction and surprisingly, he seized our attention – for a full hour and a half. A brief linguistic lesson on semantics, morphology, syntax and speeling and pronounciation was given in order to understand Mr. Twain and his encounter with the German language.
Mr Trossbach even took the trouble to give us “advicer” when learning the German language. One should rather utilize the vocabulary in phrases and not isolated words as one German verb may mean the same thing but used differently on different occasions. One should not be fooled by the similarities in the sound and the appearance of English and German words. He gave us short exercises wich proved his statement correct. By that time, everyone be it from German I, II or III was taken in and also agreed that this lecture was informative.
The time just rushed by without us even realising and before we knew Mr Trossbach concluded. Another miracle happened, every individual wanted more info on Twain’s “The Aweful German Language”. And before I conclude, notice the spelling of the word “aweful”. Maybe learning German won’t be that aweful after all!

(Melanie Lee Ahson, University of Port Elisabeth)