[Developer]

As you might know in 1998 the new German orthography was introduced to substitute the obsolete and illogical old German orthography that simply departed too much from contemporary language use.

The change encountered some fierce resistance by a few old man who think they are the great artists or something like Martin Walser and G�nter Grass, but it was generally accepted by newspapers.

Now after six years some evil spirited newspapers � Frankfurter Allgemeine, BL�D, SPIEGEL, S�ddeutsche � are reverting again to the old obsolete German orthography. Supposedly their goal is a "unified German orthography". But what in fact what they do is create more confusion about what is correct orthography � especially amongst their younger readers who have to learn the new orthography in school.

As if we wouldn't have any real problems in Germany, but no, these newspapers have to organize an orthography revolution. This is stupid, stupid, stupid

http://tinyurl.com/4svva

[Spheric Harlot]

The fools!

[MacGorilla]

Curse Bill Gates and his rugged good looks...oh wait, wrong thread.

[voyageur]

How different is the new from the old? Is it just that the sz � is no longer used?

[Developer]

� is still used after long vowels and diphthongs.

[maxintosh]

Originally posted by Developer:
� is still used after long vowels and diphthongs.

IMO, as a non-native German-language student, that particular reform makes everything more complicated. Why not just always use �? Or get rid of it entirely?

While in Germany this summer, most of the people I talked to about the reforms said they were incredibly frustrated by them and thinks they will reverse them.

There are plenty of complicated and confusing things about the German language, but I think English takes the cake. English is in dire need of a massive orthographical reform! It is by far the most complicated and inconsistant language in terms of spelling:

- Words that sound the same are spelled differently:
their/they're/there
cox/cocks/caulks
threw/through
who's/whose

- Words that are spelled them same are said differently:
lead (the metal)/lead (the verb)
dove (bird)/dove (verb)
does (aux. verb)/does (plural of doe)
wound (injury)/wound (verb)

An excerpt from the famous poem:

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

[BRussell]

I don't get it.

[cpt kangarooski]

Meh. Reforms imposed on a language sound pretty dumb to me. I'd prefer to let it proceed organically. And if you really have a problem with English, well, we could always abandon uniform spelling. It's not as though we've had it all that long anyway.

And we abſolutely muſt bring back the long s!

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by maxintosh:
IMO, as a non-native German-language student, that particular reform makes everything more complicated. Why not just always use �? Or get rid of it entirely?

That is not true. They reformed it to a uniform system: non-vocalised "s" after long vowels and diphthongs - "�", after short vowels - "ss", vocalised "s" - "s".

Before, it was truly arbitrary. "Ha�" (short vowel) but "Kasse" (also short vowel).

Originally posted by maxintosh:
While in Germany this summer, most of the people I talked to about the reforms said they were incredibly frustrated by them and thinks they will reverse them.

Where were you?

Most people I know recognize the improvement, some (if not most) of those think it didn't go nearly far enough for going through the effort of reforming at all, but I haven't met anybody who thinks that taking the reform back FIVE YEARS after the fact, now that a whole generation of kids has been exposed to them in school, is anything but a stupid idea.

I think it's utterly, utterly idiotic to reverse it now.

Originally posted by maxintosh:
- Words that are spelled them same are said differently:
lead (the metal)/lead (the verb)
dove (bird)/dove (verb)
does (aux. verb)/does (plural of doe)
wound (injury)/wound (verb)

tough/cough/hiccough/though/through/lough/bough

-s*

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:
Meh. Reforms imposed on a language sound pretty dumb to me. I'd prefer to let it proceed organically. And if you really have a problem with English, well, we could always abandon uniform spelling. It's not as though we've had it all that long anyway.

Well, that was kind of the point. To adapt the spelling to what happened in the language organically.

See, the *spoken* language evolves. The written language only evolves the way the internet has "evolved" wrt spelling.

The problem is: What are you going to teach kids?

You can teach them to spell how it sounds, but how do you teach them what letters sound like? Even those who did learn to read properly spelled textbooks are almost impossible to comprehend in writing on occasion, as these boards often enough demonstrate.

If you just make common misspellings acceptable alternates, you run into several problems: who decides that they are acceptable? on what criteria? Does it make the word more difficult to understand (when, for example prefixes are mangled)? Does it break a rule followed in the grammar? How important is that rule? Do you just mark them "colloquialisms"?

That's why this stuff has to be defined - as it is in your country - and why those kids, and their teachers, parents, and schools, are the ones truly bitten by this kind of retroactive agenda-reheating.

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:
And we abſolutely muſt bring back the long s!

That's not spelling; that's typography, no?

[maxintosh]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
That is not true. They reformed it to a uniform system: non-vocalised "s" after long vowels and diphthongs - "�", after short vowels - "ss", vocalised "s" - "s".

Before, it was truly arbitrary. "Ha�" (short vowel) but "Kasse" (also short vowel).

Where were you?

Most people I know recognize the improvement, some (if not most) of those think it didn't go nearly far enough for going through the effort of reforming at all, but I haven't met anybody who thinks that taking the reform back FIVE YEARS after the fact, now that a whole generation of kids has been exposed to them in school, is anything but a stupid idea.

I think it's utterly, utterly idiotic to reverse it now.


tough/cough/hiccough/though/through/lough/bough

-s*

Oops, I was under the impression that double-S was always written as � before. Never mind

The Swiss don't use the � character at all, right?

I was mostly in D�sseldorf and K�ln.

It's pretty hard to enforce spelling changes in general, though.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by maxintosh:
The Swiss don't use the � character at all, right?

I believe you're correct.

Originally posted by maxintosh:
I was mostly in D�sseldorf and K�ln.

And they really supported this idiotic reversal? I mean, it's one thing to bitch that everything's different, but another to actually support reversal once it's done deed. It's not like anyone has got in trouble for continuing to use the old rules, except in the print media. I worked for the second-largest public radio network in Germany until recently, and we regularly published manuscripts online from contributors who'll be using what they learned until the day they die.

Originally posted by maxintosh:
It's pretty hard to enforce spelling changes in general, though.

Well, people will get used to anything. I used to have to write official letters, and it was fairly painless once the simplifications were clear. It didn't take long till the old way looked plain weird.

The other thing is: Nobody's forcing non-author/non-high-level secretarial people to switch, in general. Sticking to the old rules is not really frowned upon, in my experience.

But the kids' textbooks have ALL been edited, and kids have been taught by the new rules for a few years now. They'll be the first "natural" generation, and in thirty years, nobody will waste a thought. (Which, incidentally, is why a number of people have criticized the reform for not being nearly drastic enough. We're talking about long terms here, anyway.)

[Developer]

Idiotic!

Yesterday DER SPIEGEL announced they return to the old orthography in this article and use the old orthography in that article. Today they have a follow up article with reactions about their return to the old orthography and this one is - tadaa - written in new orthography again! In this article they complain that they had to return to the old spelling due to low acceptance of the new one in the new one! If that isn't ironic. And then they claimed they did it to support a uniform orthography.

I'm not surprised that the reactionary Axel Springer publishing house does this, but I'm sort of disappointed that DER SPIEGEL pulled such a stupid stunt.

[Spliffdaddy]

orthography?

if people aren't dying at the hands of murderous Christians, then this is in the wrong forum.

[phoenixboy70]

i don't even give a fu<k anymore. it's not like i'm a spelling bee anyway.

i started unsing all "lower case" a few years ago...and now i'm slowely but surely introducing 1377 5p34k into my writing.

i think they should do the same with the german language!

"b1ld 5ch74gz31p3: k4nzl3r schr03d3r 15t 31n w1XXa!!!!"

"d3r 5p13g3l"

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
orthography?

if people aren't dying at the hands of murderous Christians, then this is in the wrong forum.

I'm sorry - not every nation's primary occupation (pun intended) is persecution and abuse of Muslims (though to be fair, that primarily seems to apply to Pachead and dolton).

-s*

[Developer]

Yes, there are more important things to discuss like orthography. Like Hartz IV. How "convenient" that now suddenly the orthography reform moves into the spotlight. Now the social teardown can be pushed through without much notice.

[voyageur]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
That is not true. They reformed it to a uniform system: non-vocalised "s" after long vowels and diphthongs - "�", after short vowels - "ss", vocalised "s" - "s".

I'm a little confused. So my German relatives who've always spelled their name "Gla�" would still spell their name this way because it's a short vowel?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by voyageur:
I'm a little confused. So my German relatives who've always spelled their name "Gla�" would still spell their name this way because it's a short vowel?

(Not sure if the coding got messed up, but the "�" should be Option-S on the US keyboard layout.)

Theoretically, yes.

However, with proper names, all bets are off.

[dialo]

Originally posted by maxintosh:
cox/cocks/caulks

actually, cocks should be like pot while caulks is like caught