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Quotation from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain
“a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years”
A Tramp Abroad, Appendix D (Project Gutenberg #119)
From the appendix The Awful German Language, Twain's comic complaint about genders, cases, and endless compound words.
Citation: "a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years" — Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, Appendix D (Project Gutenberg #119). (id a-tramp-abroad-q8)
Portrait: A Tramp Abroad (1880), illustration by True Williams, True Williams, Public domain.
