Did Franz Kafka recite the participle “how”?

Franz Kafka could not have recited the participle “how” because “how” is an adverb, not a participle. A participle is a verb form that functions as an adjective, such as “running” or “broken.”

The confusion arises from a mix-up of grammatical categories:

• Participles: Verb forms used as adjectives. In English, there are two types — present participles (ending in -ing, like “walking”) and past participles (often ending in -ed or -en, like “transformed” or “written”).
• Adverbs: Words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. “How” is an adverb used to describe the manner or way something happens (“She explained how it works”) or to introduce a question (“How are you?”).

Although Kafka often used participial structures in his German writing to heighten tension and imagery, he could not have treated “how” as a participle because it does not belong to that grammatical category.