German

 The last chapter in Gordon Craig's The Germans, "The Awful German Language" begins

In the days when Bismarck was the greatest man in Europe, an American visitor to Berlin, anxious to hear the Chancellor speak, procured two tickets to the visitors' gallery of the Reichstag and hired an interpreter to accompany her there. They were fortunate enough to arrive just before Bismarck intervened in a debate on a matter of social legislation, and the American pressed close to her interpreter's side so as to miss nothing of the translation. But although Bismarck spoke with considerable force and at some length, the interpreter's lips remained closed, and he was unresponsive to his employer's nudges. Unable to contain herself, she finally blurted, "What is he saying?" "Patience, madam," the interpreter answered, "I am waiting for the verb."

Craig of course quotes from the essay of Mark Twain's from which he took the title.  More seriously, he traces the history of the language from the days when Charles V said that German was fit only for speaking to horses and Martin Luther proved him wrong, up through Enlightenment clarity to Hegelian obscurity and beyond.