Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

The awful German language

Do the Garmans have a sense of humor or not? Maybe they cannot, given the structure of the language. Mark Twain may be relevant here.

Discussions - 4 Comments

Twain seems to be relevant everywhere.


The German jokes at the end were sometimes pretty good. And it seems to me that one could have endless fun with compound words that contained some absurdity or pun within them. Of course, my remnants of college German are so sparse that I can not remotely know that it is true, that it even could be done. Could it?

What are German palindromes like?

I am learning German as a hobby this year (I’m 40). And the article’s writer is correct--our English-language humor is much more "hidden words" based than the German version. The German humor is more "idea" based than our own language.

Now if I could only get the verb placement correct in my own stilted German sentences...

Not to be a downer, but given the German birthrate, it’s a dying language. Same is true for Italian. Learn Spanish or Chinese.

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