Re: OT: German reputation

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:11:40 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

>J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>> First: Learn the proper pronunciation of standard German (it's what the
>> orthography is based on).
>
>IME it is the other way around in most modern standard languages
>(excepting English): standard pronunciation is based on the standard
>orthography!
You're of course right from a diachronical point of view, that is, when we
look at how the standard historically emerged. From a synchronical point of
view, however, the actual situation does as if there were a standard
pronunciation the orthography can be based on. And not only since the
spelling reform, but also before.


>This does not mean that there is a simple one-to-one
>relation between standard orthography and standard pronunciation,
>since there will still be rules for mapping between orthography and
>pronunciation, but it does mean that standard pronunciation will be
>something of a chimaera which many people may aim at but very few
>if any will actually instantiate.  This means that there will be
>variation in pronunciation, since even when people use standardized
>grammar or vocabulary their actual pronunciation will be colored by
>local traditional dialects and other changes that have taken place
>since the establishment of the local version of "standard
>pronunciation".
Of course there is variation, I'm the last to deny this! In German, however,
there's a quite unambiguous notion of what the standard pronunciation is,
due to a prescriptive tradition which on its turn I guess is due to the huge
variation of local dialect (most of which aren't mutually intellegible).
This standard pronunciation has lost importance, but it's still mutually
tied up with the orthography.

The local pronunciation is often coloured by the standard orthography
itself. I live in a region where the local dialects really distinguish /e/
and /æ/, and some apply this to the pronunciation of the standard as well.
But they will pronounce a word like _Städte_ (cities) with /æ/ even though
historically, it had an /e/ (_stete_ in Middle High German; the original
umlaut of /a/ was /e/, not /æ/!), and even though this /e/ is still
preserved in the dialect word _Stedt_ (though the standard orthography even
begins to influences the local dialect pronunciation, so that some say
_Städt_ instead of _Stedt_).

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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