The Awful German Language

In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was
successfully removed from a patient

the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the
language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not – which is
unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the
grammar, a fish is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither.

For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU,
and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and
it means THEM.

Just the same with ZUG. Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean – when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been discovered yet.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct – it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart.

The German word for hell – Hoelle – sounds more like HELLY than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told in German to go there, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling insulted?

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.

(I don't know what wollen haben werden sollen sein haette means, but I notice they always put it at the end of a German sentence – merely for general literary gorgeousness, I suppose.

he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.