Re: OT: German reputation

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:02:27 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:

>Hi!
>
>"J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> writes:
>>...
>> It's one of the cases that clearly show the advantage of the new ß-rules: In
>> the old spelling, the pronunciation could be either /tSYs/ or /tSy:s/, in
>> the new spelling |tschüss| the only pronunciation unambiguously is /tSYs/.
It clearly is NO advantage, also before the only possible pronunciation was
/tSYs/.

>There are other examples where this ambiguity is good, because
>pronunciation is different with the dialect.  E.g. 'Spaß'.  My native
>pronunciation would be /Spas/, not /Spa:s/.  So |Spass| does not
>correspond to my native pronunciation.
Yes, the new spelling changes the pronunciation a good bit in many cases...

>Anyway, I'll always try to stick to the old spelling, because it obeys
>the rules of etymology (e.g. [old spelling] 'aufwendig' is not from
>'Aufwand', but from 'aufwenden', so [new spelling] 'aufwändig' is
>misleading), and reflects the meaning of sentences less ambiguously
>(comma rules seem arbitrary now and writing separate what is one word
>e.g. by stress rules seems odd to me, too).
Indeed, there are lots of cases where it is totally misleading, not only in
the spelling, but also if you would pronounce it after the new spelling:
"aufwändig" is pronounced clearly different from "aufwendig" (unless you
can't tell an "ä" from an "e" like the average English speaker).

>In my view, learning to write takes only a few years, but the spelling
>has to be used a lifetime long, so ease of learning is absolutely not
>important.  Or at least, has low priority.  Moreover, I don't think
>the old spelling was harder to learn than the new one.  I enjoy all
>the discussions about reforms of reforms and even about returning to
>the old spelling a lot. :-)
That's absolutely right. I'd even say that the new spelling is more
difficult to learn and use, as it made things clearly worse.

>But that's personal inclination, of course, and I do not want a war
>about German spelling here.  If this posting starts one, I will not
>answer and I will also apologize for that mess. :-)
Yes, that leads nowhere, so let's not do that.

>Sorry for commenting at all, but I had to say that I like the old
>ß-rules much better, because it affects my ownd dialect (High German
>dialect, that is, not the local language) that I feel has been
>ignored.  Therefore, I feel my L1 was damaged by the reform.
The old ß-rules were much clearer and actually made sense.
Our L1 was not only damaged, but even viciously raped by the reform.

--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of:
Choton: http://www.choton.org
Ichwara Prana: http://www.choton.org/ichwara/
Skälansk: http://www.choton.org/sk/
Advanced English: http://www.choton.org/ae/

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