[Ads-l] Quote Origin: Life Is Too Short To Learn German

[Martin Kich]

Michael,

This item struck me as funny because my recollection is that you learned
the basics of German on your own over a year or two. Am I right that you
tested out of a number of the lower-level college courses even though you
had not taken any German classes in high school?

Dad



On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 10:23 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Quote Origin: Life Is Too Short To Learn German
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Linguists on this list might find the saying in the subject line
> entertaining. The statement has been attributed to U.S. humorist Mark
> Twain, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, English satirist Thomas Love
> Peacock, and English classical scholar Richard Porson. A translator
> inquired about the provenance. Here is a link to the QI article:
>
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/11/24/learn-german/
>
> The attributions to Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde are unsupported. The
> earliest known match appeared in the satirical novel "Gryll Grange" by
> Thomas Love Peacock. The work was serialized in "Fraser's Magazine" of
> London in 1860 and published as a book in 1861.
>
> A fictional character named Algernon Falconer uttered the statement
> while he was discussing his library which centered on books in
> English, Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, but not German:
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> It was a dictum of Porson, that "Life is too short to learn German:"
> meaning, I apprehend, not that it is too difficult to be acquired
> within the ordinary space of life, but that there is nothing in it to
> compensate for the portion of life bestowed on its acquirement,
> however little that may be.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Richard Porson was a scholar at the University of Cambridge who was
> acclaimed for his knowledge of Greek. He was born in 1759 and died in
> 1808. I found no substantive evidence that Porson authored the
> statement, and I conjecture that Thomas Love Peacock crafted the quip
> and assigned it to Porson to accentuate its humor. Alternatively,
> Peacock was simply repeating a pre-existing joke.
>
> Feedback welcome,
> Garson O'Toole
>
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