There's little time to spare for blogging while I complete a crash course in reading German. I can't say anything wittier about the language than Mark Twain did in The Awful German Language, but to tell the truth I don't hate German as much as Twain did. There's something pleasantly challenging about decoding a sentence like this one, on pp. 229 of Jannach's German for Reading Knowledge:
Germans have "these", "those," and "which," and while they use commas more than English-speakers, they don't use any of these handy-dandy devices when they need them, like the above sentence which begins with a really long adjectival phrase. Literally translated, it is, as best I can tell:
If you want to understand German, think of Yoda. Basically, Yoda speaks English with German word order.
As I said, "Pleasantly challenging." Runners (the good ones, anyway) know about anaerobic threshold, the point where lactate acid builds up in your body, and you experience pain. Improving your anaerobic threshold is key to improving your time. Now I don't bother with this much because I'm a lazy runner. I can pile on miles pretty easily, but making myself run faster is like pulling teeth. But learning German is my intellectual anaerobic threshold workout. It's difficult, but not impossible, and when I'm finally able to read some dead German theologian's horrible syntax, complete with passive perfect voice, and stemwinding adjectival phrases auf Deutsch, then I will feel a great sense of accomplishment!
And you're thinking the same thing you think when you're stopped in traffic one weekend, waiting for people in their 40s to trot across the street at a 15 minute mile, +6 hour marathon pace: Why is he doing that to himself?
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