Revision of the German Language!?

For many years, experts and politicians discussed the revision of the German rules of spelling. The debate drew widespread public interest, since the matter was a very controversial one. Finally, however, the new spelling system was implemented officially on August 1, 1998. The reform aims to ease daily usage of the German language. The original 212 spelling rules were reduced to 112, and the rules of punctuation were cut down from 52 to 9. For the time being, an arrangement is effective that allows the usage of the old rules together with the new ones. This arrangement will end July 31, 2005. From that point on, only the new spelling rules will apply.

http://www.transparent.com/languagepages/German/overview.htm


Can someone please explain that?



Meesh

What do you want to know actually? I think there is everything said in this section: The German language has a new spelling system since 2005!

...but not all Germans are really happy with it!

I have found some examples:

old spelling - new spelling

Geographie - Geografie
Tip - Tipp
Stop - Stopp
Schloß - Schloss (ß only comes after long vowels like in Maß)
radfahren - Rad fahren (engl. bicycle)
...and so on

Furthermore there are less commas.

So it's only spelling changes?

The old spelling is considered "wrong?"

What if I'm taking a German course right now, and they aren't up-to-date with the new changes? Does that mean I'm learning wrong German?

I doubt that German teachers wouldn't be up to date.
Unless you're learning from a person that is not a certified teacher, in that case you might, but not without knowing it.

I think I would know, as a Spanish speaker, which version of German I'm teaching someone if I use words like "Photographia" and "Theologia" instead of "Fotografia" and "Teologia"

"So it's only spelling changes?"

Yes.

"The old spelling is considered "wrong?"
What if I'm taking a German course right now, and they aren't up-to-date with the new changes? Does that mean I'm learning wrong German?"

The old spelling is OFFICIALLY considered wrong, but I actually know a few Germans who really refuse tu use the new spelling. One of them said, that noone actually cares, since the new spelling doesn't differ that much from the old one!
But in school or if you do an application, then I guess it would be important to use it!

"I doubt that German teachers wouldn't be up to date."

I agree with that! The new spelling reform was first introduced (and used) in 1998 and really prescribed in 2005 - considering this fact, those teachers have had seven years time to learn it, lol

<<For many years, experts and politicians discussed the revision of the German rules of spelling. The debate drew widespread public interest, since the matter was a very controversial one. Finally, however, the new spelling system was implemented officially on August 1, 1998. The reform aims to ease daily usage of the German language. The original 212 spelling rules were reduced to 112, and the rules of punctuation were cut down from 52 to 9. For the time being, an arrangement is effective that allows the usage of the old rules together with the new ones. This arrangement will end July 31, 2005. From that point on, only the new spelling rules will apply.>>

There were some attempts to perform an orthographic reform during WW2 (Rustsche Reform) and in the late 50th. After that, but before 1996, there were a few news according to a planned orthography reform. Because our orthography worked fine and was updated by the Duden publishing house in a descriptive way, hardly anyone believed that the reformers will success in enforce such a reform. There were some people arguing against a possible new attempt to a reform, too.
In 1996, the reform was adopted in schools overnight and two years earlier than planned. There were no real public discussions on the actual new rules.
Without this very unfair manner of pushing the reform, it would never have taken place. After the new rules were published there was much discussion about it in the media. Most of the reformers are third class experts and the politicians -- ministers of educations -- in most cases were no experts at all.

The reformers claimed that their reform would aim to ease up orthography, the also claimed that their reform will not affect the german language at all, which is actually not the case.

In reformed ''orthography'', there are less rules than in classical orthography, but the new rules are much more complex and take more pages to present. They are difficult to grasp and often contradictionary. They even don't stick to the actual state of the development of the language and were update some times since 1996. These artificial rules are based on the ideology of the reformers, but not on the current use of the language. Being a native speaker, it seems to me that the reformers try to impose a new direction of the development of the language to the speech community.

Forget about the reformed punctuation rules, their application will lead to very ridiculus results, so that even ''reformed'' newspapers and magazins don't use them.

By judgement of the supreme court, the new rules only apply in school and in official department. So nobody being beyond school and nobody outside of official issues is forced to use the ''new'' rules, which in parts aren't actually new but a step back over much more than hunderd years.

For more information on that topic, search Antimoon forums. There's a lot of material.

Germans are practical people than french and will make revisions on spelling

Revisions on spelling to become more impractical.

The historical orthograhy is old-fashioned

Yes, Jim, a historical orthography is old-fashioned, and the reformed orthography tries to reanimate historical forms which were passed over by language- and orthography development. The double-s rule in reformed orthography is very old-fashioned, it was in use for about 20 years in Autriche an was discarded in the beginning of the 20th century. Classical orthography is not equal to historical orthography, the latter doesn't exist either.