Re: French and German (jara: An introduction)

----- Original Message -----

Somebody Jan was responding to:
> > For some reason, I've lately heard alot of flak against German's
supposed
> > orthographical horrors. I don't really see why - it may be less regular
than
> > French, but the system is certainly alot less exotic to someone used to
> > Swedish orthography (which in turn is more erratic than German), and at
any
> > rate it's way simpler than English.
Are you sure these people are not referring to the old German orthography,
i.e., the printing customs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that
were reformed?  Look at any old book in German circa 1870.  The flourishes.
The conjoined letters, especially the double ss.  There is a term for this
kind of German printing that I can't recall at the moment, but it's fiendish
to the outsider.  I find nothing particularly difficult about German
orthography today, and I can't understand how you would say that its writing
system is less regular than French!  It seems pretty phonetic, whereas in
French you have to remember which endings are silent and which not.  A
friend of mine who visited me in Geneva told me, chortling, about her faux
pas in "Old Town."  She was on the road to Old Town, but wasn't sure of the
directions.  So she asked this elderly woman, "Pardonnez moi, madame; ou est
la vieille ville?"  Only she pronounced "ville" as "vie."  "Excuse me,
madam, where is the old life?"  The woman looked at her in baffled
irritation.   I've made similar errors in Geneva.


Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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