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Radical spelling reform or partial modification?
In German, "Circus" is "Circus" if this word is foreign and people pronounce it as such. But assimilated words can be spelled phonetically.
What happened to German in 1901 was not a reform, because "there was a unification of already existing spellings". But the actual reform 1996 is influenced by ideology, which is a retrogression. You think this way. Tut mir leid.
Ideology! One thing seems clear to me. The simplification of "eszett" rule is not for speakers of German, but for learners or students. In the classroom, students are told to read aloud some stuff written in German. If new orthography is used in text, it can be easier to read it aloud. The new eszett rule is easier to understand, compared to the old one, because they can decide ss or eszett only by its preceding vowel sound. But when they try to write words, they have to know vowel length of each word. In this phase, we can say German became a little more difficult. Irresponsibly speaking, non-German speakers seldom write in German, we do not face difficultys in writing. That's why we(not you) are not so pessimistic.
In German, "Circus" is "Circus" if this word is foreign and people pronounce it as such. But assimilated words can be spelled phonetically.
What happened to German in 1901 was not a reform, because "there was a unification of already existing spellings". But the actual reform 1996 is influenced by ideology, which is a retrogression. You think this way. Tut mir leid.
Ideology! One thing seems clear to me. The simplification of "eszett" rule is not for speakers of German, but for learners or students. In the classroom, students are told to read aloud some stuff written in German. If new orthography is used in text, it can be easier to read it aloud. The new eszett rule is easier to understand, compared to the old one, because they can decide ss or eszett only by its preceding vowel sound. But when they try to write words, they have to know vowel length of each word. In this phase, we can say German became a little more difficult. Irresponsibly speaking, non-German speakers seldom write in German, we do not face difficultys in writing. That's why we(not you) are not so pessimistic.
Citation: If there's a language which never got a written form, you can use phonetic spelling for the words of that language. If this language also has words borrowed from another language, especially English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, which are widely used, and if this loanwords are pronounced similar as in the language respectively, than(sic) it maybe would be wise to write them in their original form. But people should decide! End of citation.
You must be right. But this does not apply to many words of Greek origin, because we pronounce /f/ for "ph".
The new orthography of German does not prohibit you from using "ph".
Citation: "If you as Japanese decide to have a reform, and everything is ok with that, and the japanese people like it, you should not conclude that reforms in general are good for other languages. It's a matter of free will. It's a matter of need etc."
Even if you think German spelling reform is no good, you should not conclude that spelling reforms in general are all wrong.
Citation: "When issuing a new orthography, you just add something, you can't get rid of the previous orthography. You can't prohibit the children to read texts written in classical orthography. Such texts are everywhere. And if you forbit it, you start to live in an totalitarian state. So it's not easier for the children. They must learn both forms. They will intermix them, so orthography gets arbitrary, and you get rid of the benefits of a unique orthography."
I have heard that Chinese language has two different writing systems. Complicated caracters version and simplifyed caracters version. Chinese children have to be able to read the former, but they may prefer to use the latter. What's wrong with that? In English, we still have "gaol" and "jail". We should learn both forms, but I believe many people will prefer the latter.
If I re-started learning German, I would have to face both new orthography and traditional one. I would have to buy a new dictionary. Not bad, I suppose.
''In German, "Circus" is "Circus" if this word is foreign and people pronounce it as such. But assimilated words can be spelled phonetically.''
eito: In German, the people pronouonce ''Zirkus''. It's also spelled ''Zirkus'', according to classical orthography. The spelling ''Circus'' is used on advertising placards of circusses (by the way, what is the correct english plural form of circus?). The word ''Circus'' is foreign, but it's hard to pronounce it according to that spelling. If you would try to pronounce it that way, you would get ''Kirkus'', but not with the ''i'' in the name of the captain Kirk in Star trek but with an i as in ''in''. In English, c at the beginning of ''circus'' is pronounced more like s, while the second c sounds like k.
''What happened to German in 1901 was not a reform, because "there was a unification of already existing spellings. But the actual reform 1996 is influenced by ideology, which is a retrogression. You think this way. Tut mir leid.''
Maybe you once has learnt some German. Maybe you have some sketchy knowledge of german orthographic reform. But you maybe don't live in Germany, you are not a native speaker and you don't really know about the reform itself and about the problems this reform has caused.
If you really would know about that all, and you really like the german language, you wouldn't talk the way you talk now! By the way, your
''Tut mir leid.'' is correct classical german orthography! The reformers prescribed to write ''Tut mir Leid'', which is grammatical wrong.
''Ideology! One thing seems clear to me. The simplification of "eszett" rule is not for speakers of German, but for learners or students.''
In fact, the eszett rule was not simplified. To apply the new rule correctly, you MUST know the classical rule, otherwise you will ''overgerneralize'' this rule, causing new kinds of errors on other places where s even according to reformed spelling only should occure once, as in ''Zeugnis'', ''Ereignis''. Because the vowel i is short in this kind of words, pupils who are not aware of the classical orthography misleadingly double the s there. So how can a rule be simpler if you must know more than the previous rule to apply it correctly?
The original concept of the reform aimed in reducing capitalisation. This wasn't allowed by the ministers of education, so they need to find another feature on which you can easily recognice that the text you read is reformed. Unfortunatly, they decided to delete on of the best invention for german orthography, the ß!
''In the classroom, students are told to read aloud some stuff written in German.''
Reading aloud in the classroom is not easy for german pupils, too. This also holds for english, french, etc. pupils. This holds for all the pupils all over the world, for every language. Do you remember?
''If new orthography is used in text, it can be easier to read it aloud.''
The reformers say so! But the reformers lied so many times. You can't trust them! Not offending, and not being aggressive, but if there are japanese pupils learning german in a japanese classroom most likely taught by a japanese teacher, your claim sounds like blind people talking about the beauty of colours!
''The new eszett rule is easier to understand, compared to the old one, because they can decide ss or eszett only by its preceding vowel sound.''
As I pointed out a few lines above, it is not easier to understand. For you, it seems to be easier because you only have partial knowledge. The classical rule is very easy, too, maybe with some exeptions.
You CANNOT decide if ss or ß by its preceding vowel sound! This is because the length of the preceeding vowal is, in most cases, not relevant. There are regions in germany where you pronounce ''Spaß'' with long a, in other regions, you pronounce it short. Maybe the same speaker will sometimes pronounce it long, sometimes short.
Written language isn't just a written code for pronounciation, it's a language by its own! In German, we talk about ''Schriftsprache'' refering to written language in contrast to spoken language. If written language would be just a code for pronounciation, than everything would be easy:
Just use IPA letters to write down you words. -- Yes, it would be easy for the writer, but NOT for the reader! Especially for languages with many dialects pronounciation can differ very widely, so, especially for non native speakers, most of the dialects aren't understandable. If you now say, that there is standard pronounciation, than, do you think everybody knows or wants to use standard pronounciation? Certainly not! But is there really standard pronounciation? For English, see this forum!
''But when they try to write words, they have to know vowel length of each word.''
Exept from some words, you need not. Japanese is a language highly depending on the knowledge of vowal length, so you think this is true in other languages, too. But it isn't. You just transfer concepts of your own mother tounge to other languages you're learning.
''In this phase, we can say German became a little more difficult.''
So, the easiest solution is not to perform spelling reforms on languages which already have a highly appreciated orthography!
Irresponsibly speaking, non-German speakers seldom write in German, we do not face difficultys in writing. That's why we(not you) are not so pessimistic.''
So, if non-German speakers only seldomly write in German and do not face difficulties in writing, why should German orthography be simplified for those people? Why don't they want to get the real thing, the real orthography used by german people for over 100 years and also used by the best german novelists and poets? Why do they want to read such literature in a distorted, grammatically wrong, difficult to read form with ambiguous interpretations? Do you know about that? Are you native speaker? Here in germany, there are lots of people against the reform, with increasing tendency. First, many people believed the claims of the reformers. Now, it turns out that the reform causes various problems in reading and understanding texts.
''You must be right. But this does not apply to many words of Greek origin, because we pronounce /f/ for "ph".''
It also depends on the pronounciation of the latin letters. This is not fixed amongst the languages using that alphabet.
Anciant Greek doesn't have ''ph'', as far as I know. The letter combination ''ph'' denotes aspiration in latin transcription.
Consider ''ph'' as special form of an ''f'' denoting a Greek loanword. If you're interested in language, you might like to recognize the origin of a word from the orthography, not disguising it behind phonetic spelling.
By the way: There are not so many syllables! Different witten forms are precious for making destinctions in spelling!
''The new orthography of German does not prohibit you from using "ph".''
Even the classical one does not prohibit us from using ''ph''. But
''new orthography'' (it isn't new, in fact, Heyse-s (the double s) is an invention of the past, even other parts of the reform) is not yet ready, they want to change it in the future, and they changed it about two or three times since 1996. So it's likely that they intended to kill ''ph'' and ''ß'' step by step over the next decades!
eito: Here's the next posting in that threat. Since you do understand German, read it thoroughly, maybe you get what I want to tell you with my postings here in antimoon.
http://www.sprachforschung.org/index.php?show=news&id=337#1754
Its better to be in a boat with just one hole than in one with many! You can't imporove orthography, you just get new problems!
''Citation: "If you as Japanese decide to have a reform, and everything is ok with that, and the japanese people like it, you should not conclude that reforms in general are good for other languages. It's a matter of free will. It's a matter of need etc."
Even if you think German spelling reform is no good, you should not conclude that spelling reforms in general are all wrong.''
From some general point of view, your statement seems so be correct. But we must go into the concrete case, or we must think much deeper about reforms and their effect on language and people. So every reform draws a line between the old and the new spelling. I consider this effect of any reform as not desirable. It is discriminating! There are so many negative aspects of orthographic refroms in general, that I think your statement doesn't hold in most cases. Exeptions confirm the rule!
I said that you shouldn't touch orthography if there's already a working spelling system for a language. It's quite clear, that NO spelling system can suffice all of the differing requirements of the different users. Knowing that, you can see that there is no reason for performing a reform. But we didn't define the term reform. Maybe for you a reform is something different then for me, because we have different mother tounges.
To decide if a spelling reform is wrong or not, you must know about the intention of that special reform. They might claim that it is to get it easier or something like that, but in fact, there are or at least could be other reasons. (At least, it is so with german orthographic reform: One reformer said that it was done to get responsibility for orthography back to the state.) If you change something, there will ever be winners and loosers. Most likely, most of the people will belong to the loosers.
''I have heard that Chinese language has two different writing systems. Complicated caracters version and simplifyed caracters version. Chinese children have to be able to read the former, but they may prefer to use the latter. What's wrong with that? In English, we still have "gaol" and "jail". We should learn both forms, but I believe many people will prefer the latter.
I have read that, too. But I also read about chinese orthographic reform, that there were much protest against the new sign for ''home'' and that the classical signs were much more beautiful. Of course, if children are taught the one version, they will like it more. They don't like to do extra work to get aquainted to the other and vice verca! So, ''what's wrong with that?'' is not the question.
Most likely, every language has more than one word for some concepts rendered by words. This is because languages borrow words form other languages or two dialects of one languages have different words for one concept. This also holds for German: Roß vs Pferd, etc.
''If I re-started learning German, I would have to face both new orthography and traditional one. I would have to buy a new dictionary. Not bad, I suppose.''
Yes! Than you would get a taste of the confusion made by the reform. But remember, there is not one consistent form of new spelling, but more of them. If you'll going to buy reformed literature, it'll use a special kind of reformed orthography called ''Hausorthographie'', which do not render all of the oddities of the reform. This is, because otherwise, these books wouldn't be bought by most of the readers because of the minor readability and the misunderstandings caused by ''strictly reformed orthography''. Yes, you would have to spend money on a new dictionary which will become obsolete some month later. So you'll be a looser of the reform! Do you know that all of the reformed dictionaries expose some differences in spelling? They are all declaired as valid by the ministers of education a couple of years ago! That's one of the reasons for confusion!
I thought the eszett rule was simplifyed. But when you WRITE, it's a different story. Formerly, "s" or "ß" at the end. But in the new orthography, "s", "ss", or "ß". And I have to admit that I have never thought of words such as "Zeugnis" and "Ereignis". You must be right. When you WRITE, you face some difficultys.
Citation: "You CANNOT decide if ss or ß by its preceding vowel sound! This is because the length of the preceding vowel is, in most cases, not relevant. There are regions in germany where you pronounce "Spaß" with long a, in other regions, you pronounce it short. Maybe the same speaker will sometimes pronounce it long, sometimes short."
I am very shocked! When I was a student of German, some teachers checked us about vowel length before eszett. Such a question, or a quiz, was even in some textbooks. As for "Busse" and "Buße", vowel length is not meaningless. But we had to learn "Spaß" has a long vowel and "Paß" has a short one, too.
Citation: "So, if non-German speakers only seldomly(sic) write in German and do not face difficulties in writing, why should German orthography be simplified for those people?"
In my opinion, that would make new learners learn proper pronunciation of words more easily, but I might be wrong.
Do I have to use IPA when I write words? No way! And I do NOT want to be a phonetist. Of course I CAN'T BE!
I do not deny any spelling systems. I have said INITIALLY I prefer some partial modifications. If PH is not so much obnoxious, some people might be going to conspire against the "eszett". You don't have to eliminate eszett.
You wrote, "So, the easiest solution is not to perform spelling reforms on languages which already have a highly appreciated orthography!". If you really think so, you are just postponing things!
I prefer "rau" over "rauh". I would use "Hobbys" instead of "Hobbies".
I bought a new dictionary of German. There are cross-references! But I am not so pessimistic.
''I thought the eszett rule was simplifyed. But when you WRITE, it's a different story. Formerly, "s" or "ß" at the end. But in the new orthography, "s", "ss", or "ß". And I have to admit that I have never thought of words such as "Zeugnis" and "Ereignis". You must be right. When you WRITE, you face some difficultys.''
The reform claimed to lower the amount of writing errors: In classical orthography, there's only ''s'' or ''ß'' at the end. Nowing that, the probabiltiy of making an error is 50 %. With reformed orthography, the probability of an error is two third, so increased error probability! The effect on words like ''Zeugins'' or ''Ereignis'' is called ''overgeneralisation''! Maybe most of the reformers would also have never thought on that. In Austria, at the end of the 19th century the so called
Heyse-s spelling was used for a couple of years but then, with the unification of german orthography in 1901, abandoned.
'' Citation: "You CANNOT decide if ss or ß by its preceding vowel sound! This is because the length of the preceding vowel is, in most cases, not relevant. There are regions in germany where you pronounce "Spaß" with long a, in other regions, you pronounce it short. Maybe the same speaker will sometimes pronounce it long, sometimes short."
I am very shocked! When I was a student of German, some teachers checked us about vowel length before eszett. Such a question, or a quiz, was even in some textbooks. As for "Busse" and "Buße", vowel length is not meaningless. But we had to learn "Spaß" has a long vowel and "Paß" has a short one, too.''
Yes, there are some words like ''Busse'' (busses, plural of ''Bus'') and ''Buße'' (repentance) or ''Masse'' (mass) vs. ''Maße'' (measures) where the vowal length destinguishes the meaning. ''Paß'' has a short vowal, yes, and it would most likely not be understood if you pronounce it long. It's ok if your teachers do some exercise to lean about these things. Comparable things are in every language! And as doubling the following consonant menas pronouncing the preciding value short, ß maybe could be thought of lenghtenig it. But ß stands for the sharpening of the s sound, the voiceless s. And ß is good for avoiding triple s when building compounds. The ß makes it easier to read such words as ''Schloßstraße'', ''Nußecke'' or ''Schlußszene'', which are very difficult to recognize if they would be spelled in the reform way. Try it out. So, the ß has also the task to faciltiate reading, for germans and for others who learn German. So german orthographic reform means: For a little improvement in learning about vowel length, which is of minor importance, you'll abandon the very important readability of classical orthography! To write is the easier process than to read, which is very hard to learn, even for a native speaker. A further problem arises if diphthongs preceeding the ß: Is this diphthong pronounced long or short?
''Citation: "So, if non-German speakers only seldomly(sic) write in German and do not face difficulties in writing, why should German orthography be simplified for those people?"
In my opinion, that would make new learners learn proper pronunciation of words more easily, but I might be wrong.''
Maybe in a minor amount of cases, but not in general. But the ß improves readability a lot, which is also very important, as I pointed out above! About the correct vowal length: You must learn that. There are similar cases in other languages, too, e.g. in Turkish! Learning a foreign language means learning such things. You can't get it easier!
''Do I have to use IPA when I write words? No way! And I do NOT want to be a phonetist. Of course I CAN'T BE!''
There are people thinking that written language should follow the pronounciation. In this case, you'll never get a unified spelling system.
''I do not deny any spelling systems. I have said INITIALLY I prefer some partial modifications. If PH is not so much obnoxious, some people might be going to conspire against the "eszett". You don't have to eliminate eszett.''
You shouldn't consider letters or letter combination that way. They are unique, expressing something and help you to recognize a word or a text because of they're so unusual! That's the point. These letters and letter combinations help to
easily recognize the words, the text and it's meaning. If they're replaced, reading becomes more difficult, because the text looks much more uniform!
You wrote, "So, the easiest solution is not to perform spelling reforms on languages which already have a highly appreciated orthography!". If you really think so, you are just postponing things!
Certainly not! Reread my argumentation thoroughly! The process of writing is not the problem, but the process of reading. Maybe you don't know about such things. To get aquainted to that, try to learn German ''Deutsche Einheitsstenographie'' or Englisch shorthand. Than you start to learn to read an already well known language from the beginning.
I prefer "rau" over "rauh". I would use "Hobbys" instead of "Hobbies".
The h introduces a ''Oberlänge'' into the word, so you can better read it. There's also a little aspiration! ''Hobbys'' maybe introduces a ambiguity in pronounciation, because y sometimes is pronounces ü or almost like ü. In English, y becomes ies if the word is set into the plural. It's a rule. So why not having rules which hold in the orthographies of many (related) languages.
I bought a new dictionary of German. There are cross-references! But I am not so pessimistic.
I don't know what you mean by cross references. But must likely, you have to buy a new dictionary soon! That's reform!
Attention, comprehensive look at this issue is attempted! (In other words: I hope you will put up with my lengthy post ahead) :)
From all this dispute, I tend to think the core of the problem lies with the fact that some languages with a large number of phonemes have adopted the "basic" (i.e. unmodified) Latin script, which was originally designed for a language with a relatively low number of phonemes. In ancient times, almost all literate cultures devised their own writing systems, which seemed to work just fine for them, and I doubt if the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Russians, etc. are considering any spelling reform. Languages which have most successfully accomodated Latin script to their own phonetic peculiarities have generally not been able to do without special characters like diacritical marks (in the case of West and some South Slavic languages, then Romanian, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc.) or diacritics combined with digraphs (as in German, Hungarian, Polish, etc.: I personally think these latter ones have been slightly less successful adaptations, because they sometimes look a little clumsy in writing - but otherwise they also work fine).
However, once we are left with this situation, I don't think it is fundamentally wrong to look for the best spelling. The problem in the particular case of English is first of all that there is a lack of consensus about the necessity of a spelling reform. Second, I agree that the present spelling is an unifying feature for all pronunciations of English, which are otherwise largely varied.
Third, the problem with any tampering with the present spelling is that the sound values of letters in English tend to depend on the context: "c" is /k/ in "cat" but /s/ in "cease". This can be effectively eliminated if we say, for example, that "cat" should be "kaet" and "cease" should be "siiz". But then, we reach the fourth problem: how should we write "seas" and "seize"? One reason the present English spelling works fine is that it effectively distinguishes between homophones, which are indeed many. Even the much-condemned "-ough" combination has this meaning-distinguishing value, in the case of "bow" or "bough", for example, even if it creates a confusion in the case of "enough" or "tough", which would be better written as "enuff" or "tuff". In short: whichever feature you tamper with, it confuses at least two or three other features. And fifth, how would you get hundreds of millions of English speakers to use even the most perfect new orthography?
This is why I think that, despite its apparent inconsistencies, English spelling should be left intact. I also think it is wrong to focus on the inconsistencies and forget that in most areas English spelling is rather consistent. Compare, for example, "rough" and "enough" with "muff", "puff", "stuff", "snuff", "bluff", "ruffian", etc. I think plenty of examples from other areas could be cited as well.
Another argument - which can also be cited in connection with the German spelling reform - is that spelling is not just a practical but also a cultural matter, to a very large extent. Once a spelling - whether more or less "successful" - has been widely established, anything more than a slight change is likely to cause resistance, even if this is not conscious (like the fact that pupils get confused about the "new" rules, as somebody mentioned in connection with German). I found the discussion on the problems connected with the German spelling reform very valuable in this respect, because it is a good practical example - imagine what would happen if somebody tampered with English spelling, which is a lot less "regular" than that of German.
Quoting myself: >>I doubt if the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Russians, etc. are considering any spelling reform.<<
Now I see that this is not completely true, as far as the Chinese and the Japanese are concerned. As eito has pointed out, the Chinese have both traditional and simplified characters, and there have been changes in Japanese orthography as well. However, I think that a spelling reform in English would have to be much more large-scale than that, if it were to be seriously carried through - that's why I think it would affect more than just the way words are written.
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