German grammar demands forward-thinking

I often muse on the fact that when you speak German, you have to think  precisely what you want to say, whereas English allows for more flexibility.

For example, in German, you have something called separable verbs, that is to say verbs that consist of two parts that, when used, are often split up and put in different parts of the sentence.

E.g. ansehen = to look at s.th./so.o.

Lass mich dich ansehen. Let me look at you.
BUT
Ich sehe dich an. I am looking at you.

The 'look at you' bit in English, however, keeps the same word order.

There's also a cool bit of German grammar that allows a relative clause to be shoved in front of the noun it refers to and have an adjective ending slammed onto it. You need to have a good memory if you want to remember how you want your sentence to end.

Mark Twain referred to this in his essay entitled The Awful German Language, which he learnt:

"Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel--with a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader--though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:

"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered- now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. "

Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet....."

You also have to know when you start out that the verb 'begegnen' (to meet or encounter someone) takes the dative and not the accusative.

So you can say "Ich habe ihn gesehen" (I have seen him [accusative form of er]) but you have to say "Ich bin ihm begegnet" (I have met him [dative form of er]). And yes, there's an added complication in that you have to use 'sein' with that verb to make the present perfect. Another thing to think about.

When Germans, therefore, start speaking, they have to do a whole lot more forward planning than any English speaker. They have to think of the various cases to use, whether to use 'haben' or 'sein' to make the past or present perfect, which of the 48 possible adjective endings to use, whether a verb requires the noun to be in the accusative, dative or genitive case and whether a conjunction automatically forces verb to the end of that part of the sentence. Not to mention the fact that they have to know the der, die and das of every noun and the right form of the article for the verb they want to use. And then there are the various ways of making a plural. They don't just stick an 's' to the end of nearly all words. Oh, no.

Sometimes I wonder whether all this constant thinking ahead, always planning what they want to say next is why they are more organised and more cautious with regard to the future.

I saw a bit of it when I worked for a Japanese pharma company in London for three years. The British would adjust matters as they went along. The Japanese and Germans wanted to be more precise before they even got started so that there would be nothing to sort out once the ball had got rolling.

This might be why we have the state of affairs that we do regarding the coronavirus crisis and Brexit. They're just making things up as they go along. No forward planning at all.