Re: OT: German reputation

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/.
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.

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).

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. :-)

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. :-)

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.

**Henrik