Mark Twain’s Aweful German Language Audiobook
Librivox.org, a public domain audiobook project, has a copy of Mark Twain’s fabulous essay “The Aweful German Language” in which he pleasurably depicts the pitfalls and oddities of the German language. The summary reads:
If you’ve ever studied German (and maybe even if you haven’t), you’re likely to find this short essay to be hilarious. Published as Appendix D from Twain’s 1880 book A Tramp Abroad, this comedic gem outlines the pitfalls one will encounter when trying to wrap one’s mind around the torturous German cases, adjective endings, noun genders, and verb placement.
(Summary by Kara)
Incidentally, the audiobook is read by a German, which adds to its hilarity. (And I hereby admit to probably having a similar accent, so yeah…)
By the way: Don’t take the poor Mark Twain too literally. German really isn’t that bad! 
Link to the audiobook (the page also has a link to add it to iTunes with one click).
December 17th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
LOL. I have read his essay online and it’s funny because most of it is true. I think for us Americans, German is next to impossible to learn unless you’re exceptionally gifted with languages. I’m pretty much the opposite: I don’t do well with languages at all to put it mildly.
I have tried German and yikes! The language really doesn’t make much sense at all. You have the whole gender/case thing to confuse us, word combinations that don’t make sense when analyzed, undecipherable verb placement that seems to change based on the most minute difference in wording, etc.
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 am
to mr. Keith: no pain. no glory. rome wasn’t built in a day.