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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Wonderful citations, LH. Thanks for sharing them. I have updated the
QI article and changes should be visible within 24 hours.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/11/24/learn-german/

[Begin acknowledgement excerpt]
Many thanks to Laurence Horn who told QI about the illuminating Twain
citations dated 1878, 1880, and 1889.
[End acknowledgement excerpt]

Garson

On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 11:01 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> This time the attribution to Twain, though unsupported, is at least plausible and not simply the usual case of Twain acting as quote magnet. There is, for example, this, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court:
>
> Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
>
> And this, which relates more closely to the quote under investigation:
>
> Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.
> Notebook #14, November 1877 - July 1878
>
> He had a lot of other complaints about German, especially in “The Awful German Language”:
> https://www.viaggio-in-germania.de/awful-german-language.pdf
>
> LH
>
> > On Nov 24, 2024, at 10:23 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org