> I rather think that the people who you spoke with used a simpler structure of sentences than is common in educated circles because you would otherwise have di

> I rather think that the people who you spoke with used a simpler structure of sentences than is common in educated circles because you would otherwise have difficulties understanding them. I think this is probably true. I mean, it's natural to have a more waxing structure and decorative diction when attempting to express oneself poetically. I guess it just feels like the ceiling of "acceptably waxing" in German poetic discourse is stratospheric in comparison. I think the lengthy prepositions on their own would be more tolerable – but when you toss in various obscure inflections on adjectives and nouns, the split verbs, overloaded words like `sie`, it feels like a system that was designed to confound! Or, conversely, to signal intelligence. It reminds me of the idea that the rules of proper dining etiquette were invented arbitrarily at the court of Louis XIV, mainly as an improvised mechanism for dunking on the aristocrats they didn't like. :) I imagine it must make for wonderful poetry and literature, though. I'm imagining some young up-and-comer confidently promising "he'll take care of the patrician's daughter while in the palace". But he accidentally uses the wrong "the" for "palace" because it's a word he's not accustomed to using or hearing, forming an ironic double-entendre that he doesn't understand, that makes him look foolish to the patrician and foreshadows some misbehavior to the reader. On the one hand, it's beautiful that the inflection of one word, can totally invert the meaning of a sentence. But on the other hand you have to be so knowledgeable about the minutiae of the language itself to even catch it when it happens! And in the end, it could have been a typo of the author. Argh :D German.