The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
numerable words ; for example, instead of " Untersitchung n is written " Untersuch ; " nay, even instead of " allmalig,' " malig ;" instead of "beinahe," "nahe;" instead of " bestdndig," " stdndig.
If a Frenchman took upon himself to write "prbs " instead of "presque," or if an Englishman wrote " most " instead of " almost," they would be laughed at by every one as fools ; but in Germany whoever does this sort of thing passes for a man of originality. Chemists already write " loslich " and " unloslich " instead of " unaufloslich" and if the grammarians do not rap them over the knuckles they will rob the language of a valuable word.
Knots, shoe-strings, and also conglomerates of which the cement is softened, and all analogous things are " loslich " (can be loosed) ; but what is " aujloslich" (soluble), on the other hand, is whatever vanishes in a liquid, like salt in water.
" Auflosen " (to dissolve) is the terminus ad hoc, which says this and nothing else, marking out a definite conception ; but our acute improvers of the language wish to empty it into the general rinsing-pan " losen " (to loosen) ; they would therefore in consistency be obliged to make " losen " also take the place everywhere of "ablasen" (to relieve, used of guards), "auslosen" (to release), " einlosen" (to redeem), &c, and in these, as in the former case, deprive the language of definiteness of expression.
But to make the language poorer by a word means to make the thought of the nation poorer by a conception. Yet this is the tendency of the united efforts of almost all our writers of books for the last ten or twenty years. For what I have shown here by one example can be supported by a hundred others, and the meanest stinting of syllables prevails like a disease.
The miserable wretches actually count the letters, and do not hesitate to mutilate a word, or to use one in a false sense, whenever by doing so they can gain two letters. He who is capable of no new thoughts will at least bring new words to market, and every ink-slinger regards it as his vocation to improve the language. Journalists practise this most shamelessly ; and since their papers, on account of the trivial nature of their contents, have the largest public, indeed a public which for the most part reads nothing else, a great danger threatens the language through them.
I therefore seriously advise that they should be subjected to an orthographical censorship, or that they should be made to pay a fine for every unusual or mutilated word; for what could be more improper than that changes of language should proceed from the lowest branch of literature?
Language, especially a relatively speaking original language like German, is the most valuable inheritance of a nation, and it is also an exceedingly complicated work of art, easily injured, and which cannot again be restored, therefore a noli me tangere. Other nations have felt this, and have shown great piety towards their languages, although far less complete than German.
Therefore the language of Dante and Petrarch differs only in trifles from that of to-day; Montaigne is still quite readable, and so also is Shakspeare in his oldest editions. For a German indeed it is good to have somewhat long words in his mouth ; for he thinks slowly, and they give him time to reflect. But this prevailing economy of language shows itself in yet more characteristic phenomena.
For example, in opposition to all logic and grammar, they use the imperfect for the perfect and pluperfect ; they often stick the auxiliary verb in their pocket ; they use the ablative instead of the genitive ; for the sake of omitting a couple of logical particles they make such intricate sentences that one has to read them four times over in order to get at the sense ; for it is only the paper and not the reader's time that they care to spare.
In proper names, after the manner of Hottentots, they do not indicate the case either by inflection or article : the reader may guess it. But they are specially fond of contracting the double vowel and dropping the lengthening h, those letters sacred to prosody ; which is just the same thing as if we wanted to banish rj and to
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from Greek, and make e and o take their place. Whoever writes Scham, Marchen, Mass, Spass, ought also to write Lon, Son, Stat, Sat, Jar, Al, &c. But since writing is the copy of speech, posterity will imagine that one ought to speak as one writes ; and then of the German language there will only remain a narrow, mouth- distorting, jarring noise of consonants, and all prosody will be lost. The spelling " LUeratur " instead of the correct " LUteratur " is also very much liked, because it saves a letter. In defence of this the participle of the verb linere is given as the root of the word. But linere means to smear; therefore the favoured spelling might actually be correct for the greater part of German bookmaking ; so that one could distinguish a very small " LUteratur " from a very extensive " LUeratur." In order to write concisely let a man improve his style and shun all useless gossip and chatter, and then he will not need to cut out syllables and letters on account of the dearness of paper. But to write so many useless pages, useless sheets, useless books, and then to want to make up this waste of time and paper at the cost of the innocent syllables and letters — that is truly the superlative of what is called in English being penny wise and pound foolish. It is to be regretted that there is no German Academy to take charge of the language against literary sans-culottism, especially in an age when even those who are ignorant of the ancient language venture to employ the press. I have expressed my mind more fully on the whole subject of the inexcusable mischief being done at the present day to the German language in my "Parerga," voL ii. chap. 23.
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