Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/321

Rh example, in Anatomy – is an incredibly tiresome and lengthy business. If the other nations were not in this respect wiser than the Germans, we would have the trouble of learning every terminus technicus five times. If the Germans carry this further, foreign men of learning will leave their books altogether unread; for besides this fault they are for the most part too diffuse, and are written in a careless, bad, and often affected and objectionable style, and besides are generally conceived with a rude disregard of the reader and his requirements. Secondly, those Germanised forms of the termini technici are almost throughout long, patched-up, stupidly chosen, awkward, jarring words, not clearly separated from the rest of the language, which therefore impress themselves with difficulty upon the memory, while the Greek and Latin expressions chosen by the ancient and memorable founders of the sciences possess the whole of the opposite good qualities, and easily impress themselves on the memory by their sonorous sound. What an ugly, harsh-sounding word, for instance, is "Stickstoff" instead of ''azot! "Verbum," "substantiv," "adjectiv," are remembered and distinguished more easily than "Zeitwort," "Nennwort," "Beiwort," or even "Umstandswort" instead of "adverbium."'' In Anatomy it is quite unsupportable, and more over vulgar and low. Even "Pulsader" and "Blutader" are more exposed to momentary confusion than "Arterie" and "Vene;" but utterly bewildering are such expressions as "Fruchthälter," "Fruchtgang," and Fruchtleiter" instead of "uterus," "vagina," and tuba Faloppii," which yet every doctor must know, and which he will find sufficient in all European languages. In the same way "Speiche" and "Ellenbogenröhre" instead of "radius" and "ulna," which all Europe has understood for thousands of years. Wherefore then this clumsy, confusing, drawling, and awkward Germanising? Not less objectionable is the translation of the technical terms in Logic, in which our gifted professors of philosophy are the creators of a new terminology,