Honestly, in my experience as a native German speaker spoken and written German are more similar to each other than spoken and written English. Just speak German as you would write it might sound a little bit more formal than is usual, but it won't cause you any trouble to err a little bit on the "too formal" side.

> I've felt that the written language requires massive intellect to pull apart as a non-native speaker, in comparison to the spoken language (once you adjust for pronunciation, etc.).

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.

You should actually rather feel spoiled: in older German texts, it can actually easily happen that a whole paragraph consists of one single sentence (this rarely occurs in contemporary texts). Just to give one single arbitrary example:

"Wenn es die Verwirklichung von Urträumen ist, fliegen zu können und mit den Fischen zu reisen, sich unter den Leibern von Bergriesen durchzubohren, mit göttlichen Geschwindigkeiten Botschaften zu senden, das Unsichtbare und Ferne zu sehen und sprechen zu hören, Tote sprechen zu hören, sich in wundertätigen Genesungsschlaf versenken zu lassen, mit lebenden Augen erblicken zu können, wie man zwanzig Jahre nach seinem Tode aussehen wird, in flimmernden Nächten tausend Dinge über und unter dieser Welt zu wissen, die früher niemand gewußt hat, wenn Licht, Wärme, Kraft, Genuß, Bequemlichkeit Urträume der Menschheit sind, – dann ist die heutige Forschung nicht nur Wissenschaft, sondern ein Zauber, eine Zeremonie von höchster Herzens- und Hirnkraft, vor der Gott eine Falte seines Mantels nach der anderen öffnet, eine Religion, deren Dogmatik von der harten, mutigen, beweglichen, messerkühlen und -scharfen Denklehre der Mathematik durchdrungen und getragen wird."

(https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/musil/mannohne/chap011.htm...)

And no, I have no difficulties understanding this sentence.

> And no, I have no difficulties understanding this sentence.

This is what calls my attention most. During your language acquisition process, your brains may develop some specialized connections to handle such sentences. In Portuguese (and probably in most languages) it is possible to build such monstrosities -- and there are concrete examples which I won't recall now. However, one does that for literaly reasons, to sound overly sophisticated or intentionally difficult etc. It's definitely not a natural way to write, and it probably never happens spontaneously on spoken language. I can, very sporadically, grasp such long sentences in my language at the first pass, but it's always difficult and, even then, I usually reread just to make sure I really understood it.

The "trying to sound overly sophisticated" is a thing in German too, no worries :)

That said, personally I'm prone to this when writing. Even in English.

You've also tried. With this sentence, haven't you ;)

    I can, very sporadically, grasp such long sentences in my language at the first pass, but it's always difficult and, even then, I usually reread just to make sure I really understood it. 

With some thinking you can probably convert your entire post into a one sentence paragraph.

> 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.

I'm a native German speaker as well. While I understand this sentence, I think it is bad style in many cases. It's fine for artsy things where the reader is focused but if you have sentences like this in e.g. a report for a project you did or in an email to a colleague at work, it will most likely not be read at all or not understood correctly. What I mean with this: In everyday situations where people are stressed and/or in a hurry they don't take the time to read anything long properly. Also the the longer the sentences become, the harder it is to get the grammar right.

Very often I heard (and applied) the rule for "everyday" communication to keep the sentences short and to split longer ones if possible.

That’s horrendous and seems like bad form in any language. I was taught to write English as I speak it. If you need to pause, use a comma. If you need to breathe, use a period. But don’t run on sentences if you wouldn’t speak it out loud the same way.

> I was taught to write English as I speak it. [...] But don’t run on sentences if you wouldn’t speak it out loud the same way.

This is no contradiction. In particular in formal public speaks in German it is not uncommon to use complicated sentence constructions - and the audience is expected to understand it.

In other words: the difference is rather in the mentality.

- The English mentality rather seems to be to avoid complicated constructions. This might be explainable by the melting pot of the United States, where you could not rely on that everybody is very knowledgeable in English.

- The German-speaking world was historically much more culturally homogeneous. So you could rely on the fact that the conversational partner is pretty confident in the German language; so you could use sophisticated language constructions.

That’s interesting but I would still expect a German to take a breath.

To your point, both the UK and US had melting pot scenarios. The former is where the vast majority of the language was defined.

You may have guessed correctly that I’m American, but I speak nearly identically to my ancestors in 1776. Likely only losing some colloquialisms and picking up others. Perhaps losing Scottish, Dutch, French, German and Swiss accents.

In my family, my g-great grandfather from Munich or Mecklenburg (both apply but I don’t recall which ancestor this was offhand), forbade children from speaking English at the dinner table. He thought they were making fun of him. Sometimes language is less melted and simply dies off.

It's funny to see this actually. I never thought about it the way I read it from Mark Twain. Neither had I ever thought about English being a hard language because it has no regularity and every second word is an exception in how to pronounce it. But French eludes me.

Written German of the times of Mark Twain is also quite different from today's. Of course the actual context dictates formality as well. Personally I can't understand Shakespeare era English nor German. It's just gibberish to me. With lots of concentration maybe but not just reading or listening to it.

Also, the whole Dative and Genetive thing is not just a formality/written vs spoken thing but more a generational and societal one. Using Dative for things where the rules actually prescribe Genetive is a class thing. Working class usually means everything is just Dative. And if you're not good at learning languages. Even as a German native speaker. If you are trying to sound high society and snobbish you'll use a lot of Genetive in the proper way. Or if you simply learned it that way and it became second nature to do it correctly. A lot has changed that way since Twain.

> Written German of the times of Mark Twain is also quite different from today's.

The German language mutated less over the centuries than the English language. An educated native German speaker should be able to mostly understand the "Nibelungenlied" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied), a text written down in the mid 13th century, which is thus nearly 800 years old.

-Ish I guess :)

    Uns ist in alten mæren wunders vil geseit
    von helden lobebæren, von grôzer arebeit,
    von freuden, hôchgezîten, von weinen und von klagen,
    von küener recken strîten muget ír nu wunder hœren sagen

A "mær" (as Maer - imagine an a umlaut) does exist still but the word is so antiquated that I don't expect kids these days to know it. "wunders"? No idea. Something about "wonder"? "vil" sure, viel (a lot). "geseit". No idea. "seit" is that "sein" (to be)? Doesn't fit the rest of the sentence I guess. Definitely need to look that up.

"lobebæren". No damn idea whatsoever. Now "grôzer arebeit", sure that's "grosser Arbeit" but when I look at the "translation to German" (from the middle high German the original apparently is written in) it says it's "groesse Muehsahl".

"hôchgezîten": Hochzeiten? Like weddings? Makes no sense. Maybe "Hochzeiten" as in 'high times'? Funnily same word different pronunciation depending on context :)

"recken" very old word. Again something kids these days probably have no idea about. I do but it's been a while I learned it all. "strîten" means streiten I guess which makes sense given the Recken, but without knowing what those are, not sure. "muget" Sounds like "muggle" but maybe "moeget"? So "moegte ihr". "nu wunder hœren sagen": "jetzt wunder hoeren sagen"? But what does that mean?

Some of this may not be a problem of "Shakespeare's times" vs. today but also "poem language" vs. "regular people language". I have trouble with poems.

I'd write it as this basically:

    Uns ist in alten Maeren viel Wunder <no idea what geseit is>
    von Helden <somethingwhatever>, von grosser Arbeit
    von Freuden, Hochzeiten, von Weinen und von Klagen,
    von kuehner Recken streiten moeget ihr Wunder hoeren sagen

Now even after looking up the two missing words, geseit is gesagt (to say) and lobebaeren just doesn't exist but was somehow translated to something I still would not be able to understand this if it was just read to me. I have to read it myself and actively think about it. On the other hand my sibling posts meandering whole paragraph sentence is very easily understandable.

On the other hand, here's a recipe for strengthening a wooden shield with leather in old English:

    take lether that ys half tannyd and drye hym and shave the flesshe syd
    and take glwu wt water and set yt over the fyere
    and melte yt wt water and then al hote ly yt a pone the leder on the flesshe syde
    and strawe ther on the powder of glasce bete yn a brasene morter ...

I'll stop there so we stay within the same 4 lines. But I had a much easier time reading that than the Niebelungenlied. And yes, my mother tongue is German :)

    take leather that is half tanned and dry him and shave the flesh side
    and take glue with water and set it over the fire
    and melt it with water and then while hot lie it upon the leather on the flesh side
    and strew thereon the powder of glass beaten in a <brasene I had to look up but also makes sense: brass-en> mortar

If anything, except for spelling mistakes like syd vs. syde, I think that's actually more consistent than modern English. I.e. I'd say syd for side is perfect. A y by itself makes the "why" sound. So syd is exactly how I'd write it if I was told to write it just from hearing the word once and knowing the alphabet. Why does it need an e at the end and why would we nowadays write it as side but not pronounce the e (like French sort of, just leave out the last 1-3 letters when pronouncing a word).

> If anything, except for spelling mistakes like syd vs. syde, I think that's actually more consistent than modern English. I.e. I'd say syd for side is perfect. A y by itself makes the "why" sound. So syd is exactly how I'd write it if I was told to write it just from hearing the word once and knowing the alphabet.

Because it used to be pronounced with the e, not unlike Seite, but has long since been dropped. In the 1300s, in the time of Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales, this would've been pronounced with the trailing e.

That is awesome info! Very interesting that English used to be more like German in that regard then, i.e. being able to actually kinda write things like you say them (or vice versa).

Do you know if this is more of an exceptional case or was it common for many words?

I'm no expert on the subject, but I'm to understand things were somewhat cleaner in the past. A critical problem is that, like many languages, English's pronunciation shifted over the years, but the spelling did not. In truth, I think the spelling was somewhat unstable. It was somewhat subjective back then.

But the spelling became exceptionally bad after the printing press with movable type (i.e. Gutenberg's printing press). The printers decided for themselves on certain spellings and the spellings really froze in place based on the choices the printers made. This was also the period of rapid changes in pronunciation, particularly vowels. But English never really had a spelling reform except Webster's small one in early USA. And yet the spelling was locked in place. Whoops!

> A "mær" (as Maer - imagine an a umlaut) does exist still but the word is so antiquated that I don't expect kids these days to know it.

The word [die] Mär/die Märe [the lore, myth] (in modern German one would rather use "die Kunde" (not to be confused with "der Kunde" [the customer])) is used regularly in modern German in the diminutive form: "das Märchen" (the fairly tale). So, a Märchen [fairy tale] is a small lore.

> "wunders"

die Wunder [the wonders].

> "geseit"

In modern German, you would say "gesagt", which is actually rather similar, but it might cause trouble to find this relationship on your own.

> lobebæren

You can immediately see the relationship to the noun "[das] Lob". So you can guess that in modern German you would use "gelobt" (I agree that using "gelobt" sounds a little bit stilted in modern German, but this shall not matter here).

> sure that's "grosser Arbeit" but when I look at the "translation to German" (from the middle high German the original apparently is written in) it says it's "groesse Muehsahl".

Your guess is perfectly correct: the meaning of "Arbeit" has shifted over time, so in modern German, you would rather use the word "Mühsal".

> "hôchgezîten": Hochzeiten? Like weddings?

A wedding is actually a "high time" (Hoch-Zeit). This relationship is slightly obscured in modern German in that if you mean "wedding" the initial "o" in Hochzeit is pronounced differently when meaning "wedding". If you pronounce "Hochzeit" as "Hoch-Zeit", the meaning becomes very clear ("Hochzeit" as in "Hochphase" ["high phase" -> heyday]).

> "recken" very old word.

The word "der Recke" [valiant] is a (slightly old-fashioned) word that does exist in modern German.

> "strîten" means streiten

Exactly; "streiten" in the today less commonly used (but perfectly understandable) meaning "kämpfen" [to combat]. If you are used to the lyrics of the Lohengrin opera

> http://www.wagneroperas.com/indexlohengrinlibretto.html

"streiten"/[der] Streiter is permanently used in this older meaning, for example:

Friedrich: [...] Hier steh' ich, hier mein Schwert! Wer wagt von euch, zu streiten wider meiner Ehre Preis!

Die Brabanter: Keiner von uns! Wir streiten nur für dich!

    used regularly in modern German in the diminutive form: "das Märchen"

Agreed. That word is used and everyone knows it. "Maer" as an actual word. Very much not so. I did not make the connection actually although your explanation makes perfect sense for the origin of Maerchen.

    lobebæren

    You can immediately see the relationship to the noun "[das] Lob"

I did not see that at all and I do not think I'm the only one. Now, once you've told me, I can totally see it. This is exactly my point about not being able to just listen to this or read it and understand right away. I have to stop and think and look stuff up.

    The word "der Recke" [valiant] is a (slightly old-fashioned) word that does exist in modern German.

I never said the word does not exist. Just that, like you also mention, it's old (fashioned) and not in very active use and I do not expect many kids these days to recognize the word. If you read slightly older books about knights and such for boys with a bunch of "kuehne Recken", sure. Otherwise: doubtful in my opinion.

    If you are used to the lyrics of the Lohengrin opera

That's also part of my point. If you're into poems, especially old ones, you'll have a better time. If you're "poem blind" like me, there's no way I can just have someone read the Niebelungenlied in the original to me and understand what's going on. No I am not used to Lohengrin type lyrics.

As for using Streit as a noun, yes, no problem there, though the fact that there's no proper capitalization in the Niebelungenlied text does not help to figure that out. I immediately read it as "streiten" the verb only.