German Spelling Reform Changes
Posted on February 17, 2010
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Have you noticed, when leafing through a brand new German book, that some words may not be spelled the way you remember them? About fifteen years ago, most German-speaking countries agreed to initiate a program of German Spelling Reform, which was planned to phase in over several years.
You may not even spot the changes at first. You may notice that the word “daß” (that) is now written “dass.” One of the most distinctive characteristics of German – its long compound words – has been somewhat diluted, with many former compounds now appearing as two or three separate words. “Du” and “dir” are no longer capitalized, while the more formal “Sie” and “Ihnen” continue to be. You may also notice that an attempt has been made to make words adopted from other languages follow German spelling conventions.
Why the need for German Spelling Reform – or Rechtschreibreform, as it is called in German? Rechtschriebreform arose out of a series of conferences between a number of German-speaking countries; the goal was to clear up inconsistencies in the way German was spelled from one region to another. Switzerland, for example, seldom used the “ß” character, otherwise known as an Eszett or a scharfes S. This character, which has an unvoiced sibilant sound, is replaced in Swiss German by a double S (“muss”). Other countries, such as Austria, adamantly felt that the Eszett helped to give German its unique character and the language would be poorer without it.
The haggling over German spelling reform across was bitter, protracted, and intense. For this reason, the changes everyone eventually agreed on were more than the traditionalists wanted but less radical than the reformers sought. The rules governing the use of the Eszett versus the double S are extremely confusing and still inconsistent. Another goal was to cease capitalizing nouns, and that didn’t happen either. After several conferences, an uneasy consensus was reached, and in 1996 most German-speaking countries (and a few with significant German-speaking minorities) signed the agreement. Over the course of the next eight years, according to the agreement, the tenets of German Spelling Reform would gradually be phased in, with all schools teaching the new spelling and all government agencies using it exclusively.
It’s one thing to pass a resolution to standardize spelling in education and government; it’s another to get the average person in the street to go along with it. The new spelling is being used in schools and government offices, but few other people have warmed to German spelling reform. It’s too soon to fully assess the effect the German Spelling Reform will have on the German language; for now, students of German should simply be aware that discrepancies exist, and understand why.
You can learn to speak German easy with the Rocket German language course. You might also like to learn German with the audio-based language course Pimsleur German.
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