German grammar makes for strange bedfellows. The news publishers Axel Springer (Bild) and Spiegel, which normally don’t agree on anything, have jointly announced that that they will abandon the German spelling reform, joining the FAZ newspaper as major media using the old (classic?) German spelling rules. Reformed spelling has been taught in schools since 1998, and was to become mandatory in 2005, although I’m not really sure how a government can mandate proper spelling. Wouldn’t it be better for spelling to be outsourced to experts like Duden?
As for German blogs, as a non-native speaker I don’t really care about spelling, but I do find lack of capitalization somewhat hard to read.
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I feel the same about lack of capitalization in German texts. However, English texts have (almost) no capitalization, and people have no problem reading them, which shows that using the proper rules — e.g. spelling or capitalization — makes it easier to read texts. This is what really scares me about the recent developments.
And as a native German speaker living abroad since before they implemented this spelling reform I’m thoroughly confused how to spell anything now. Probably best if I just stay here and forget my German before trying to understand this mess
But I fully agree that writing everything in lower case is more difficult to read.
As to how a government can mandate proper spelling — it’s not like there’s a spelling law. Just like in the late 19th/early 20th century, when the old spelling was invented, the state decided on a unified spelling for its schools and official documents based on recommendations from linguists.
That the state decides anything about spelling and grammar is a foreign concept to me. I’m used to having the language dictate to bureaucrats how to spell instead of the other way around.
Before, Duden just followed the “streams of language used” – and I am sure we will see some day Standart as equivilant to Standard (seufz).
Maybe the fact that the states (austria and swiss included) tried to decide for me what to write was the reason for me to stay with the old version.
I never ever felt a single wish to use the new one.
i want to study how to spell the langueg of germany.
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