Grappling With the ‘Complexities’ of the German Language

William Tuohy attributes the decline of students studying German during the past 20 years mostly to the “nightmarish complexity” of the German grammar.

It is true that German classes have suffered declining student enrollments. The decline is now leveling off in the United States. German enrollment has also been rapidly increasing in many Eastern bloc countries where it is often easier to communicate in German than in English. However, it is not true that the past decline is solely due to “the complexities of the German grammar.”

During the late ‘60s and early ‘70s many foreign languages, as well as other serious academic subjects, experienced a decline. While other foreign languages, especially Spanish and French eventually recovered and even increased, German continued to slide. This was due in part to shifts in immigration patterns and to the stereotyping of all things German by the American media after World War II. As an avid reader of American and German publications, I am often under the impression that the American press deliberately suppresses positive news about the many important cultural, economic, and scientific achievements and contributions by Germans and German-Americans. Negative publicity of this sort discourages Americans from studying a language that is the key to a culture that has produced some of the world’s greatest minds.

As a German professor who has thoroughly enjoyed teaching German to Americans of all ages during the past 24 years, I have yet to meet a student who, equipped with some common sense and diligence, is unable to acquire some fluency in the language. Most of my colleagues in the field, as well as my students, would agree with me that it is less the complexity of the language than the lack of the individual student’s motivation that causes an occasional student to fail.

The anecdote about Charles V speaking German to his horse does not mean that German was too difficult for anyone else to understand. It does mean that this German Emperor and King of Spain was multilingual. On the other hand, Mark Twain’s satire in “The Awful German Language” is characteristic of the linguistic chauvinism of some English speakers who ridicule foreign languages without first having taken the trouble to learn them. Or does Tuohy want the readers to conclude that it was easier for Charles V’s horse to understand German than it was for Mark Twain!

And what about Mme. De Stael’s remarks that the verb at the end of a German sentence caused her to forgo “the pleasure of interrupting, which makes discussion so animated in France.” It is true that most dependent clauses end with the conjugated verb. With due respect for Mme. De Stael’s writings, one does not carry on conversations in dependent clauses, not in German, or in English, or in French. In most independent clauses, i.e. in the majority of all sentences, the conjugated verb in a German sentence is in second position, just as it is in English. Besides, contemporary German is much more simplified than the 18th Century German which Madame had to struggle with.

LEO W. BERG

Glendora