000 – TASL – The Awful Spanish Language
There is a famous essay by Mark Twain, called THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE.
Only a Genius (with a capital G) like Twain could have made the horrors of learning a foreign language so funny. He detailed the absurdities (at least to an English speaker) of German grammar, and structure; and he did so hilariously.
THE AWFUL GERMAN LANGUAGE – Mark Twain
In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not — which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse.
It has been forty years that I have tried to learn Spanish. I still struggle. I think it may have lopped off 40 IQ points from my brain.
Like Twain, I am starting a series of articles about the horrors of Spanish.
Anybody who has ever taken a course in Spanish should appreciate this.