AMD 2 - Emily Seidel

For my second AMD, I read Mark Twain's essay, "The Horrors of the German Language". As was its point, the direct translation was very difficult to read. I often found myself reading a line over and over again trying to figure out what it was saying. While direct German to English translations may be very difficult, I would assume that this is true for many language translations. Twain was writing from the perspective of his native language being English. Of course the structure of German seems convoluted to him, and to any other native English speaker. I'm sure that if the speech were originally written in English then translated to German, native German speakers would consider the English language to be just as convoluted.

I did find it very interesting to read the English and German translations side-by-side. It definitely taught me some new German phrases. I agree that this is a very good way to learn more about a language. When one translates a sentence from German to English so that the English sentence still makes sense, it can often be difficult to determine which words in English correspond with the German words. With it side by side, you can directly see what the German words mean. It also allows you to see the structure of the sentence more clearly, regardless of how little it may make sense to you in English.