8/12/2019 What if...English Versus German and English
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s+6 JACQUES BARZUN JCQLTES BARZUN '41body is inclined to
belittle English for its mongrel characteri"d 1 -t'illogicaiities',
let him remember the limitations of its rivals: 'W'eare Lrcky to
have, in James's words, a language 'with all themodern
improvements'. ,984such things as: Monsieur est ttatina{ vous allez
a'a spectacle; 1lsetait pruienl de prendre un imperm'eable; c'est
un indigine; oui, larepr'esiatation est int(tgrale-and, so on. The
truth is, no other*ords are avallable 1"*..pt ,lrt g), and all
these 'learned' termsare the famiiiar ones, iust ,.-ili" highfuhtin
emergen4T in Englishts the oniy \riay to refer to a very
commonplace event'The reiults-of these contrasting developments in
the leadinglanguages of the \West go beyond differences of style;
they mayplalsib'iy be held responsible for tendencies of thought'
Thus,itr." pt ilosophy stopped being written in Latin, the
Englishschool that ^-r. *rt the Empiricist-thinkers who believed
inthe primacy of tltings: ideas vzere viewed as coming from
obiectsin the world concreteiy felt. In French philosophy, notions
camefirst: abstract words breed generalities at once, and the realm
ofthought is then seen as cut off from the world of things,
theminJfrom the body. See M. Descartes. The historians Tocque-vi11e
and Taine thought that some of the greatest errors of theFrench
Revolution were due to unconscious and misplacedabstraction.By the
same token, the French language has a reputation-whoiiy
undeserved-for being the most iogical of all. For threehundied
years Ftench wtiters have tepeated this myth in goodfaith, because
the act of fltting together abstract, generalizingterms lends a
geometrical aspect to the product. But Frenchgf^fnmar and osage and
spelling are full of iilogicalities-1ikethose of other languages.As
for Getman, its iumpy compounds and awkvrard syfltaxpresent a
paradox. There is a sense in which a fotmal German,.rrr.rr..
delivers its core meaning three times over-once in theroot of the
verb, again in the noun, and finally in the adiectivesor adverbs
almost l*ryt tacked on to those other terms' Onemight therefore
have expected that German thought would bepeJuiiarly down-to-earthl
yet everybody knows that is has beenpeculiarly cloudy. The probable
explanation is that the wordsihat have to be used fot abstract
ideas (like Vorstellang-'ptttbefore') acquire the abstract quality
while keeping visible theiroriginal concreteness. This double
aspect makes the user con-fident that he is on solid ground. The
upshot is the German aca'demic prose that made l(ierkegaard,
Nietzsche, and WilliamJames lear their hair
(Eigenesbaarsichauslupflickenplage)' If any-
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