German Reform?

In addition to the options you cite above (like adding a hyphen or separating the componds as English does), you could also capitalize each new word within the compound, so:

StoffFetzen = Stoff + Fetzen
SauerstoffFlasche = Sauerstoff + Flasche
NussEcke = Nuß/Nuss + Ecke

wäßrig > wässrig (still able to see clear division of syllables)

...cont.
<<StoffFetzen; SauerstoffFlasche; NussEcke; wässrig>>

^how do those look to a German speaker?

unacceptable?

If anybody ever tried changing my language like this, I'd kill them! Just leave German alone and it will evolve naturally like all other languages - you don't need to reform it, it has worked perfectly well for hundreds of years!

"If anybody ever tried changing my language like this, I'd kill them!"

You'd be a mass murderer. Shame on you!

<< "If anybody ever tried changing my language like this, I'd kill them!"

You'd be a mass murderer. Shame on you! >>

Don't be surprised.
Just take a look at the history.

Who's trying to change anybody's language?
It's the Germans themselves who introduced the reforms, and the majority of Germans don't whine about. It's just that those who do are quite vocal.

English needs a reform much more badly than German did but you don't see any reforming it.

Every language can be reformed in one way or another, but the German spelling reforms were introduced by the Germans themselves, and indeed the majority of the Germans adopted them with no problem. It's just a minority of people with "good old days" mentality who snivel about them.

The german spelling reform was not ''introduced by the Germans themselfs'', but by a very small minority of German spreaking -- that means notnecessarily Germans, but Autrichians and Swiss people -- third class prescriptive linguists. The whole majority of the german people was quite happy with the classical orthography. There were no parliamental assignment for making a reform either.

Guest Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:30 am GMT, stop telling things you don't have any clue about.

And those who keep on whining about the new orthography are in fact a minority of the German population.

With every language reform there's always a part of the population who react aversely. Mostly those with a "good old days" mentality.

Guest Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:36 pm GMT

<<Many of the reforms affect trifles in the writing, and tens of millions of Germans have been adopting them without snivelling around.
The new generation has no problem with it.
The insecurity persists because old conservatives keep on talking at everybody that the old was better.>>

Insane eh?

<<The Israelites had to wait 40 years before they could enter the promised land because a change in the mentality was necessary.>>

The Israelites got punisched for not sticking to their traditions, their faith and their god and for worshipping a new faith, symbolized by a golden calf instead.

<<Just stop the nostalgy and move forward!>>

The reformed spelling is nostalgy, because they brought up forms which were discarted more than 100 years ago. So, to stop the ''nostalgy'' and to move forward, we need to stop the reform!

Thank you for agreeing!

<<In addition to the options you cite above (like adding a hyphen or separating the componds as English does), you could also capitalize each new word within the compound, so:

StoffFetzen = Stoff + Fetzen
SauerstoffFlasche = Sauerstoff + Flasche
NussEcke = Nuß/Nuss + Ecke>>

Remember, writing started out with handwriting, and switching to capitals within a word would be against orthographic principels, principels of the language (remember, the special stressing) as well as would it be unpractical in the writing process. It soon would become two seperated words again.

Try to write Sauerstoffflasche and SauerstoffFlasche by hand and consider the distance between the last f of -ff and the f of -flasche and the last f of -ff and the start of the F letter.

Even if German often uses compounding, in many cases, especially with nouns, you are not forced to do so, but apart of that, three similar consonants in sequence are very rare exept in reformed orthography with triple s.

Why using a cramp-like solution when there is a natural one?

<<wäßrig > wässrig (still able to see clear division of syllables)>>

Remember, in many cases, you have to add endings:

wäßrige Suppe, wäßriger Wein, wäßriges Gemüse

There lacks a upper length to grasp the glimpse! Remember, orthography is for the convenience of the reader in the first place. But ß is also convenient for the writer.

See here for the so-called Ranschburg inhibition, which means that things are more difficult to lern the more similar they are:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87-Ranschburginhibition.html

http://www.stolzverlag.de/de_blog_permalink_111.html

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranschburg-Ph%C3%A4nomen

So lot's of very similar s inhibit learning.

By the way, why don't you complain about the umlant in wäßrig? Why just about the ß. Why don't you complain about the eclipse e in wäßrig?
With it, it would be wässerig!

Compare with Englisch calf vs. calves or itself vs. themselves.

Go on. Keep on whining.

If you want to write with the old spelling, be my guest. Nobody's stopping ya.

Guest Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:40 pm GMT:

<<why should one phoneme--'s'--be given so much special attention?

is there also an analogous way of handling 'tt' with a new letter?

how about 'nn'?
>>

Guest, ever heard of stenography or shorthand?


In German, it's called Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift or Deutsche Einheitsstenographie, adopted in 1910.

Here are some of its principles (there may be some exeptions, too):

There are no capital letters. If someone writes Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift, he or she isn't concerned with capitalisation at all, even not at the beginning of a sentence and also not in proper nouns. But well, you can denote a capital by putting a horizontal bar below the stenographic shape.

You don't write double vowels.

You don't write double consonants.


Consider the following German words:

her = (hin und her = to and fro)
Heer = army
Herr = gent, gentleman, lord, master, mister, sir

So, applying that rules you would get

her --> her
Heer --> her
Herr --> her

In most of the cases, you would surely distinguisch them by context. But that's not the way Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift works.

The stenographical shape of the letter h is like the number 2 without the horizontal bar below.

The letter e is denoted by a short junktion line between two other shapes. (Here, between the low end of the h and the upper left point of the r.)

The letter r looks like the lower half of a backslash.

her is a stenographic abbreviation (Kürzel) denoted by the letter h

Heer is written ''her'' in stenographic shapes

Herr is written ''he(rr)'' in stenograpic shapes

I use (rr) here to denote that there is a special stenographic shape for double r, which looks like an entire backslash. So (rr) looks similar to r, but has doube height.

There are three exeptions to the third principle mentioned above: You have special shapes for

ss = ß (looks similar to the capital letter O)

ll (double l, looks like two connected loops without a white spot in the middle of the loops, i.e. like two connected dots)

rr (looks like a backslash)

So, how to write the compound Tierreich=animal kingdom in Stenography?

No, you don't use (rr)! You write ''tir'', go back to the base line because the i (and it's just an i because i = ie in Kurzschrift) is denoted by a junktion line from the lowest point of the t (which looks like a slash, but less inclined) to the upper left point of the r, which is shiftet upwards half the higth of the distance of the base line to the upper line, then have a little space between it and write ''reich''. You can't use (rr) because each r belongs to another word.

I actually have no exemple why it is necessary to have double l either, but it will be fun to discover it some day.

According to my stenography teacher, the shape of the s (similar to the small letter o) is choosen for good reasons. The shape o (or a little circle) is a shape where you can easily connect other shapes at any position. Thats because in German, s often occurs as Fugen-s on the junction of two compound words, see:

Interessensgemeinschaft

Interessengemeinschaft would be correct, too, but I prefer the form with Fugen-s because it sounds more natural and is much easier to pronounce.

Interessen = interests pl.
Gemeinschaft = alliance, association, collective, companionship

The stenographic n looks like a tilde on the base line. If you write Interessensgemeinschaft, the n and the s come very close and -- you must admit, the circle fits well into the last part of the tilde.

If you want to write the word erst = first, primal, not until in stenography, the r and the s are not wirtten separatly but melt together
in the way that the r is shifted a little upwards and ends up in the circle.

If you want to write hin as in hin und her (to and fro), you melt the shape of stenographic h with the tilde, which denotes n. The resulting shape looks like the number 2 but the bar below replaced by a tilde. It is also a Kürzel.

If you want to write selbst = self, in person in stenography, you don't write it out letter by letter, because its a Kürzel. You must learn it. Kürzels are often derived by a special process: Take some outstanding letters of the word you want to derive a Kürzel for, and melt them somehow together. Applied to selbst, you take the s and the t (here, its another kind of t called Aufstrich-t, because it's preceeded by an s and not at the beginning of a word), append that t to the point where the s ends, and clip it a little.

Stenography if full of processes like that. And you complain about how the ß is derived?

In stenography, the (necessary) deformation of stenopraphic shapes is explicitly allowed. It must be allowed, because otherwise, it would be very unconvenient to write which would result in lowering down your writing speed.

Of course, you must pay for that: It's much harder to read texts written in stenography because of -- besides the little deformation of shapes -- the extinction of redundancy, elided characters (rare), ''mutated'' vowels (remember, i = ie, ei = ai and ä can be e in some circumstances) mistakenly used Kürzels, etc.

You can learn Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift in a couple of month, but you need much more time and practice to really be able read it halfway fluently.

Learn the standard shorthand of your mother tounge. It will be eye-opening!