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Journal Ethelred Unraed's Journal: The doom of the German language is nigh 25

Journal by Ethelred Unraed
As of today, the new orthography (i.e. spelling) rules for German are officially binding in most German Länder and in Austria.

Big deal, you may ask. Well, it's not so much a big deal as it's a farce.

This is a controversy that has been going on for years. You see, German has only one big dictionary -- Duden -- which has ruled over the German language like ayatollahs for decades. They have been trying to get new rules imposed on the language for just as long, supposedly to simplify it, and have in effect tried to dictate terms. Back in 1996, a committee formed out of Duden and the culture ministers of the various Länder finally came up with a sweeping reform and plunked it on the Germans' collective laps -- to howls of protest.

Seemingly nobody wanted this reform, except Duden (who presumably are delighted at the new dictionary sales). There has been bickering and fighting over it ever since, with some Länder (the German equivalent to a federal state) blocking it, and others shrugging and using it. One Land, Schleswig-Holstein, even revoked the reform by referendum. Imagine if California starting spelling and writing things differently than, say, New York, with both states penalizing students for spelling things the "other" way, while a number of states taught both systems at the same time to the same students. Meanwhile, most newspapers refuse to use the new rules at all, whie magazines grudgingly go along. You now have an idea of what it's been like in Germany the last few years.

(Granted, in the English-speaking world we have competing spellings, but as a rule it's reasonably consistent within each country -- "cooky/cookie" being a glaring exception in America thanks to Webster -- and as for grammar, there are openly competing but broadly agreeing rulesets to choose from, so no one group can impose a load of bullshit on the world.)

In spite of polls showing overwhelming resistance to the reforms, and in spite of recent revelations that many of the reforms proposed were originally from the Nazis (the idea was the make the language simpler to make it easier for the "lower races" to learn German), the reformers somehow got their way, and in 14 of the 16 Länder and in Austria, the reforms are now binding as of today.

What I really don't understand is that the rules are often more complicated than before. Consider the German letter "ß", which is just a substitute for "ss" in some situations. The old rule was simple enough: if the "ss" wasn't split by a syllable, then write "ß" instead. It basically represented a soft "s" sound, like in reißen, as opposed to the "z" sound if the "s" in reisen. So you had words like "daß" ("that"), "Spaß" ("fun") or "spaßig" (adjective form of fun). If you wanted to simplify things, you'd probably just drop the ß altogether, right? (Which is what the Swiss have done anyway.) Well, the new rule is that the "ß" can only come after a long vowel. So now it's "dass", "Spass", and "spassig", but "Fraß" (feed), "Maß" (measure) and so on. Make sense? Didn't think so. Worse, people now have started confusing "dass" and "das", which never happened when "dass" was really "daß".

Also strange is the new insistence on not dropping letters in compound words. Thus Schiff + Fahrt is now Schifffahrt and not Schiffahrt like before (which just looks jarring having three "f"s like that). Or See + Elefant is now "Seeelefant". And the rules for when to combine nouns and verbs ("to ride a bike" is now "Rad fahren" and not "radfahren") are even more inconsistent than they were.

Foreign words, especially English ones, also got hammered into a more Germanic shape, for no apparent reason other than to supposedly make things more consistent...except that they aren't. So "Tip" is now "Tipp", "Grizzlybär" is now "Grislibär" (which really ought to have a second "s" after the first "i" if it was truly consistent). But "Handy" (the German malaprop for "cellphone") is still "Handy" and not "Händy" ("a" is always "ah" in German). Meanwhile, "Buffet" is now "Büffet"...even though "-et" is not pronounced "-ay" in German. Ever.

The old dictum of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" would seem to apply. But some eggheads had to have their way, and have created einen Haufen Scheiße in the process.

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The doom of the German language is nigh More

The doom of the German language is nigh

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  • Actually, in college there was one Canadian guy I knew who did get penalized by the teachers for using British english spellings, even though they knew he was from Canada.
    • Well, that's what I touched on in the JE: within a given country the English spelling rules are generally consistent. Because your Canadian friend used Canadian spellings in an American college, he was (rightly IMO) marked wrong.* Were the situation reversed, it would be equally right to mark the American wrong when using American spellings in a Canadian college. You have to live up to the standards of the school you attend (including choice of grammar rulesets), or you don't get full credit. Seems only fai
      • They have their own orthography, though it is true that it is fairly similar to British ("Oxford") English.

        Correcting myself: for the hell of it I visited Wikipedia, which flat-out states that Canadian English is more similar to American English [wikipedia.org] than British English. Whoops. Ah well, a matter of perspective, I guess. ;-)

        Cheers,

        Ethelred

        • Well, the usage is more similar to American English, but we never went for Mr. Webster's spelling changes (-our vs. -or, -re vs. -er, etc.) which make up most of the noticeable differences in the written language.
      • In Canada?! Ahem. *chuckle chuckle* I wish it were so...

        Unfortunately, you have some periodicals that use Canadian orthography and some periodicals that use Associated Press style (US orthography), and people tend to spell a mishmash of ways, when they can be bothered to spell correctly [angryflower.com] at all.

        I can actually remember when The Toronto Star switched to the canonical Canadian spellings, on the grounds that there had been reader pressure for them to do so -- people had literally written in and said, "Why
        • Eesh. I didn't realize it was that chaotic in Kanuckistan.

          Though it's still in a sense "consistent" in that it's consistently chaotic, if you follow me. ;-)

          Meanwhile, in Germany, the system is fragmenting, such that the Swiss are going one way, chunks of Germany the other, and Austria and the rest of Germany another way...while within each area, only the preferred system is allowed, and all others are considered wrong. Contrast this with English, where you pretty much have a free choice of style guide,

          • I had teachers that would mark me down for using southron orthography on and off, both inside and outside the south. I just shrugged and kept right on using it. Some gave up on trying to bend me, some kept right on trying until I moved on to the next class, but it never made any real difference. What would they do with someone like me in Germany? Fines? Gaol time?

            • While they won't fine you or throw you into "jail" (*g*), it could cause other problems -- such as losing your job (or not getting a promotion), because the company or institution's policy is to write everything according to Duden. Or if you're a kid, you get bad grades and quite possibly flunk out of school, with all the disadvantages that that implies. In Germany, grades still matter some, too, in spite of some grade inflation.

              At least at the schools I went to in the States, so long as I could point to

              • Could definately cause work problems in the US, but never has, simply because I write whatever style the employer wants - whoever pays gets to call the rules. But schools never paid me for my work, so far as I was concerned they should be grateful if I gave them something.

                It lowered my grades, but generally only from an A+ to a low A, so it didn't matter so much. But I did have a couple of teachers that decided it was their task to break me. Cultural genocide is such an ugly job, and it takes a rather ugl

          • Meanwhile, in Germany, the system is fragmenting, such that the Swiss are going one way, chunks of Germany the other, and Austria and the rest of Germany another way...

            Well, you could say the same thing about speakers of English, with the US going one way (or a number of ways), Canada going another (thanks for that link, btw, I had wondered if I was going mad re that "traveller" etc. thing), Australia going another, the UK going still another, plus then you get all the regional variations on English with

  • In Belgium at least in the flemish part, you also have the 'preferred' spelling and the 'alternatif' spelling. Both forms are thaught to children but the preferred spelling is the one they should try to use. The 'alternatif' spelling exists solely for the purpouse of being used in old ancient articles, novells, lawbooks and so on.. The (flemish federal) state has officially declared 'The green book' as the one containing the only correct spelling to any dutch word. I think the German govt was aiming for
  • I'm following along, pronouncing things in my head, then I get to this part:

    But "Handy" (the German malaprop for "cellphone") is still "Handy" and not "Händy" ("a" is always "ah" in German).

    And as soon as I say "Händy" with an "ah" vowel in my head, I instantly hear Frank N. Furter say "He thought you were the händyman" and now it seems to be stuck there. (This is in spite of the fact that he actually says "candyman.")

    I was out skating earlier while listening to the Jesus Christ Superstar so

    • And as soon as I say "Händy" with an "ah" vowel in my head, I instantly hear Frank N. Furter say "He thought you were the händyman" and now it seems to be stuck there. (This is in spite of the fact that he actually says "candyman.")

      FWIW "a" is pronounced "ah" in German, but "ä" is more like the vowel sound in "meh". Kind of in between the long "a" of "day" and the short "e" in "bed". So "Handy" really ought to be spelled "Händy" if the people over at Duden really wanted to be consiste

  • The "a" in "Spaß" is a long vowel and thus "ß" stays: Spaß/spaßen/spaßig.

    But you're right, the reform is a real mess. And as someone from Schleswig-Holstein who voted against it I'm still pissed that the Landtag ignored the outcome and just passed a law that nullified the referendum.
    • Ah well, then I'll be happy to welcome you here in NRW (North-Rhine Westfalia, one of the two states that refused to accept the Rechtschreibreform). The weather is just as cold and rainy at times, even though I fear I cannot offer anything as a replacement for the two seas you have up there. (I envy you a bit for that, we used to spend our holidays on Fehmarn and I *really* miss the sea.)
      • I *really* miss the sea.
        Yeah, I can understand that. I grew up in Ostholstein north of Lübeck about 10km to the beach of Timmendorfer Strand. Now I live in Lübeck and it's only a short train ride to Travemünde.

        I'm not sure if I ever wanna leave this region [google.com].

  • That 'ß' vs 'ss' bit sounds like something dreamt up by Monthy Python. I can see it beofre me now: John Cleese lecturing hapless citizens on the intricacies of the new, easier (or, in other words, enlessly more complicated) way of using the respective letters.

    The entire thing would be hilariously funny ... were it not so tragic.
  • i can understand wanting to make the spelling more phonetic, which the new rules concerning ß do accomplish. i don't think all of the rules are as straight forward, but those rules are. if they wanted to affect this with more popular support, they really should have let the rules sit longer in the public eye and learned some old fashioned marketing rather than just trying to explain the logic of it. germans do not like change. this is even more so for germans than people in general, who don't like
    • I guess it is because I'm American, but the idea of having a language institute try to impose prescriptive rules on a language seems rather silly.

      The practice in the US at least is that the various style guides and dictionaries tend to follow actual usage rather than trying to change usage with top-down rules.

      True you do get the problem where the major style guides (Strunk & White, Chicago, AP) disagree with each other or lag in reflecting a commonly accepted change. Though outside of educational instit
      • english's phonetic system is also not nearly as unified.

        another difference is that german already had to do this. well sort of. it wasn't really a unified language until around 1900; it was a group of loosely related languages and dialects. if they wanted to be a unified people, someone had to decide what the standard language would be. duden was there for that one, too. some of the german dialects spoken now are still incomprehensible to native german speakers not from the town where it's spoken. thi
        • FWIW yeah, it's still quite common to hear dialects spoken in southern Germany, especially in Bavarian and Baden-Württemberg. We were down there for a visit a couple of years ago in the Stuttgart area and got the grand tour from some friends who are natives of those parts. Outside the cities, dialects are pretty much the order of the day (though everyone learns and also speaks Hochdeutsch). What's particularly odd is that dialects change dramatically from town to town and valley to valley, such that th
          • when i was studying in germany it seemed like people under about 25 primarily spoke high german while those older primarily spoke the local dialect, at least where i was. there seems to be a struggle between the lokalpatriotismus and the desire to be understood more than 5km from your birthplace. so it seems like the pure and obscure forms of the dialects are going away but regions hold on to stronger elements in more populous areas, but pockets retain their unintellible speach out of stubborness.

            some of
            • when i was studying in germany it seemed like people under about 25 primarily spoke high german while those older primarily spoke the local dialect, at least where i was.

              Seems to vary. The people who gave us the tour in the area where we were around Stuttgart were all in their 20s and 30s, and spoke their various dialects alongside Hochdeutsch (switching back and forth). The dialects around Hannover, though, are long gone. (In fact people around here boast about how their German is supposedly the purest

              • Seems to vary.

                it just occurred to me that it was more like the older ones couldn't speak hochdeutsch, and were therefore more limited.

                The dialects around Hannover, though, are long gone. (In fact people around here boast about how their German is supposedly the purest form.)

                i know. i mentioned this to one of my teachers in germany (in ulm). she then made fun of the way they pronounced the letter "s" before hard consenants, complete with sissified type gestures.

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