German Spelling ((TOP))

The German orthography reform of 1996 (Reform der deutschen Rechtschreibung von 1996) was a change to German spelling and punctuation that was intended to simplify German orthography and thus to make it easier to learn,[1] without substantially changing the rules familiar to users of the language.

The reformed orthography became obligatory in schools and in public administration. However, there was a campaign against the reform, and in the resulting public debate the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany was called upon to delineate the extent of reform. In 1998[3] the court stated that because there was no law governing orthography, outside the schools people could spell as they liked, including the use of traditional spelling. In March 2006, the Council for German Orthography agreed unanimously to remove the most controversial changes from the reform; this was largely, though not completely, accepted by media organizations such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that had previously opposed the reform.[4]

German Spelling

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The rules of the new spelling concern the following areas: correspondence between sounds and written letters (this includes rules for spelling loan words), capitalisation, joined and separate words, hyphenated spellings, punctuation, and hyphenation at the end of a line. Place names and family names were excluded from the reform.

The so-called s rule makes up over 90% of the words changed by the reform. Since a trailing -ss does not occur in the traditional orthography (which uses - instead), the -ss at the end of reformed words like dass and muss (previously mu) is now the only quick and sure sign to indicate that the reformed spelling has been used, even if just partly, in texts (except those of Swiss origin). All other changes are encountered less frequently and not in every text.

Several loan words now allow spellings that are closer to the "German norm". In particular, the affixes -phon, phot-, and -graph can be spelled with f or ph.

On 14 July 1998, after one hearing on 12 May 1998, and involving only one teachers' organisation, the High Court declared that the introduction of the spelling reform by the ministers of education was legal.[non-primary source needed]

In the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, a majority of voters in a referendum on 27 September 1998 called for a return to traditional spellings. However, the minister-president of the state, Heide Simonis, found a way to reverse the results of the referendum via a parliamentary vote in 1999.

While the new German dictionaries were published in July and August 1996, the critics of the language reform perceived themselves to be justified. They began to demand the reversal of the change at the federal level. However, the ministers of education continued to refuse to accede to their demands. The editors of the Duden dictionaries also agreed that many of the problems in the traditional spelling system were due to the "arcane rules" that had been fabricated to explain the system, thus lending their support to the new spelling system, which they said was and is more logical.

In 1997, an international committee was formed to handle any cases of doubt that might arise under the new rules. In 2004, the German federal minister of education and research, Edelgard Bulmahn, announced that this committee was to be given wide-ranging powers to make decisions about German spelling. Only in cases of extreme changes, such as the proposed capitalisation change, would the committee require the consent of the states' ministers of education. This move was strongly criticised.

Simultaneously, the committee released its fourth report on spelling reforms, reviewing the points of the reform in detail. However, this report was rejected by the Conference of Ministers of Education in March 2004. The ministers also demanded that the committee work together with the German Academy for Language and Poetry in its future deliberations. The academy had been strongly critical of the reform from the beginning. The ministers also made changes to the composition of the international committee.[citation needed]

In July 2004, the ministers decided to introduce some changes to the reform, making both the traditional and the new spellings acceptable. They also formed a Council for German Orthography, "38 experts from five countries", representing linguists, publishers, writers, journalists, teachers and parents. Taking the place of the existing international committee, the Council agreed unanimously to implement the uncontroversial parts of the reform, while allowing compromises on other changes: "writing compounds separately or as a single word, [on] the use of lower and upper case, punctuation and syllabification".[14] This modified reform came into effect by 1 August 2006.

The spelling change is based on the international agreement of 1 July 1996, signed on behalf of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The signatories for Germany were the president of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Karl-Heinz Reck, and the parliamentary secretary of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Eduard Lintner. There have been no Bundestag (parliamentary) decisions on the reforms. Instead, as mentioned above, the German Supreme Court ruled that the reform in the public schools could be decided by the ministers of education. Thus, as of 1 August 2005, the traditional spelling system was to be considered incorrect in the schools, except that two of the German states, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia, had both officially rejected the reform. Since 2006, the new rules have become compulsory in Bavarian and North Rhine-Westphalian public schools as well. It is presumed that from the schools the writing reforms will spread to the German-speaking public.

As of 2004[update], most German printed media used spelling rules that to a large extent comply with the reforms. These included most newspapers and periodicals, and the German press agencies Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) and Reuters. Still, some newspapers, including Die Zeit, the Neue Zrcher Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Sddeutsche Zeitung, created their own in-house orthography rules, while most other newspapers used approximately the rules set out by the DPA. These in-house orthographies thus occupy a continuum between "old spelling with new rules for " and an (almost) full acceptance of the new rules.

Schoolbooks and children's books generally follow the new spellings, while the text of novels is presented as the authors prefer. Classic works of literature are typically printed without any changes, unless they are editions specifically intended for use in schools.[citation needed]

Since dictionaries adopted the new spellings early on, there is no currently in-print, standard reference work available for traditional spellings. However, Theodor Ickler [de], a Professor of German at the University of Erlangen, has produced a new dictionary that aims to meet the demands of simplification without the need to impose any new spellings.[clarification needed] It has not been reprinted since 2004. The commerce in used copies of the older Duden dictionaries has dwindled. As of the 2004 edition, the Duden dictionary includes the most recent changes proposed by the ministers of education.[citation needed]

Due to the nature of the topic, most books and papers regarding the German spelling reform appeared in the German language. The following list includes authors who are responsible for the definition of the imposed changes.

German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.

This change towards the so-called Heyse spelling, however, introduced a new sort of spelling error, as the long/short pronunciation differs regionally. It was already mostly abolished in the late 19th century (and finally with the first unified German spelling of 1901) in favor of the Adelung spelling. Besides the long/short pronunciation issue, which can be attributed to dialect speaking (for instance, in the northern parts of Germany Spa is typically pronounced short, i.e. Spass, whereas particularly in Bavaria elongated may occur as in Geschoss which is pronounced Gescho in certain regions), Heyse spelling also introduces reading ambiguities that do not occur with Adelung spelling such as Prozessorientierung (Adelung: Prozeorientierung) vs. Prozessorarchitektur (Adelung: Prozessorarchitektur). It is therefore recommended to insert hyphens where required for reading assistance, i.e. Prozessor-Architektur vs. Prozess-Orientierung.

A typical feature of German spelling is the general capitalization of nouns and of most nominalized words. In addition, capital letters are used: at the beginning of sentences (may be used after a colon, when the part of a sentence after the colon can be treated as a sentence); in the formal pronouns Sie 'you' and Ihr 'your' (optionally in other second-person pronouns in letters); in adjectives at the beginning of proper names (e.g. der Stille Ozean 'the Pacific Ocean'); in adjectives with the suffix '-er' from geographical names (e. g. Berliner); in adjectives with the suffix '-sch' from proper names if written with the apostrophe before the suffix (e. g. Ohm'sches Gesetz 'Ohm's law', also written ohmsches Gesetz).

Even though German does not have phonemic consonant length, there are many instances of doubled or even tripled consonants in the spelling. A single consonant following a checked vowel is doubled if another vowel follows, for instance itag_hash_110__er 'always', latag_hash_111__en 'let'. These consonants are analyzed as ambisyllabic because they constitute not only the syllable onset of the second syllable but also the syllable coda of the first syllable, which must not be empty because the syllable nucleus is a checked vowel. 006ab0faaa