A RAM reduction
English Writing For German Speakers – Part 1
To write well in English, German speakers should start by switching off about half of their brain’s RAM. It’s as if their language brings them into adulthood with 8 gigs, while we English speakers have only 4. That’s the only way to explain how German speakers read sentences like this every day without having their brain short-circuit:
In dem Magazin werden mittels modernster Internet-Technologie die Megatrends der Zukunft wie beispielsweise eine steigende Anzahl von Herz-Kreislauf-Krankheiten, ein wachsender Bedarf an hochwertigen Nahrungsmitteln und die Kohlendioxid-Problematik angesprochen. (source)
This sentence overloads the English speaker’s RAM for one simple reason: the main verb is at the end. We rush through everything until we hear “angesprochen”, and then think: “OK nun...was wird angesprochen? Und mittels was?”—which of course takes us back to the start of the sentence.
It’s not easy for us English speakers to keep so many bits suspended in our heads before we know what to do with them. It’s as if you handed us an armful of papers before we have a filing cabinet to put them in. Give us the cabinet first so we can then calmly slot the papers into it.
The verb is the anchor of the English sentence: when it appears early, it lets the reader calmly absorb the details to come. Of course this doesn’t mean that all English writers remember this. Take an example written in typical “academese”:
Understanding the difference between the funding requirements of start-ups as opposed to mature companies is indispensable business knowledge.
Here, too, we see the same loop-de-loop effect: we reach the end of the sentence only to ask, “OK, now what is indispensable business knowledge?”
This sentence becomes immensely more lucid with a simple switch-around: “It is indispensable business knowledge to understand the difference…” Even my 4-gig RAM can process this rewrite on the first pass through. The early verb guides the details into their place with minimal effort on the reader’s part.
(Some readers may find my “it is” suggestion a half-baked solution, which it is. But only now that our verb appears early can we start to think about what verb to use—the topic of next week’s post.)
Let’s see another example:
The template for the production of cellular proteins in a child—through which a child’s body is built and run—is created by genes.
Like in the previous example, this sentence becomes immensely easier to understand by merely putting the verb at the beginning: “Genes create the template…” You may have noticed that I made a passive sentence into an active one. This is often, but not always, a quick fix for a passive construction: just make it active to get the verb to the front.
German and English simply follow distinct rhythms, and the place of the verb has a lot to do with it. Back when I was learning German, I remember reading a sentence, understanding each word, but somehow not getting the big picture. The bricks were there but the mortar was missing. As I practiced, I felt my brain rewiring itself to process and produce the cadences of German.
So as your first major lesson, just remember to put the verb early. Even if you use weak and boring verbs—or dummy constructions like “it is”—if it comes early, you’ll keep the English speaker’s RAM running within its specs.
