Ich kann nur träumen!

I am currently trying to piece together an article on Jose Rizal, hopefully for web publication. It never ceases to amaze me how amazing the man was. I am a big admirer of polyglots, like Jose Rizal and Vladimir Nabokov. Rizal could speak 12 languages fluently, write in 5 proficiently, and had knowledge in 20 in total. To think that I consider having learned the intricacies of German a feat! I would still like to insert Spanish and maybe Japanese.

Heto ang kopya ng mga sulatin ni Jose Rizal kay Ferdinand Blumentritt. Isinulat niya ito sa Aleman, at humingi siya ng paumanhin kay Blumentritt sa kanyang "bastos na Aleman." (kitchen German, as he put it.) Galing sa ufrey.geocities.com



Mahirap basahin ang Aleman ni Rizal dahil nuong panahon na iyon, iba ang pagkakasulat ng Aleman. Mayroon silang sariling titik, parang Cyrillic. Mahirap, pero posibleng basahin ang Aleman nuon kung ito ay inilathala sa isang libro o sa diyaryo. Pero kapag sulat-kamay na, patay kang bata ka. I tried reading a handwritten text once from the 1930s, the English notebook of a German schoolboy, and it was really in vain. It looked like a bunch of squiggles!

And here is another letter from Rizal to Blumentritt, in English! God, his English is almost flawless! And to think that English at that time was not yet the lingua franca that it is today!



Und hier ist die Fortsetzung von dem Brief. Einen Teil davon ist auf Französisch. Apol, please read this letter and rate his French. How good is it?



Ich muss mehr daran arbeiten, bis mein Deutsch perfekt ist!