Fri, 19 March 2010
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CDU politicians approved a resolution -- despite Merkel's reservations -- calling on the German parliament to enshrine the German language in the constitution.If he were alive today, US humorist Mark Twain would have been amused at efforts by Chancellor Angela Merkel's party to have the German language officially enshrined in Germany's constitution.
Twain never ceased to poke fun at "Die Deutsche Sprache" after struggling to master the language during a visit to Heidelberg in the 19th century.
"My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in 30 hours, French in 30 days, and German in 30 years," he wrote in a humorous essay titled The Awful German Language after a visit to imperial Germany in the 1880s. "It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired.”
"If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it," he added.
Not that members of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) paid any thought to Twain's caustic observations, made 120 years ago, at a party conference in Stuttgart earlier this month.
Overwhelmingly, they approved a resolution -- despite Merkel's reservations -- calling on the German parliament to enshrine the German language in the constitution.
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