The author consequently held himself bound to give his
broken English a truthful form. So far as observation and care,
aided by the suggestions of well-educated German friends, could
enable him to do this, it was done. But the more extensive were
his observations, the more did the fact force itself upon his
mind, that there is actually no well-defined method or standard
of "German-English," since not only do no two men speak it alike,
but no one individual is invariably consistent in his errors or
accuracies. Every reader who knows any foreign language
imperfectly is aware that HE SPEAKS IT BETTER AT ONE TIME THAN
ANOTHER, and it would consequently have been a grave error to
reduce the broken and irregular jargon of the book to a fixed and
regular language, or to require that the author should invariably
write exactly the same mispronunciations with strict consistency
on all occasions.
The opinion -- entirely foreign to any intention of the
author -- that Hans Breitmann is an embodied satire on everything
German, has found very few supporters, and it is with the
greatest gratification that he has learned that educated and
intelligent Germans regard Hans as a jocose burlesque of a type
which is every day becoming rarer.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28