3 ms·

As the article mentions, Germany had a big battle around such changes 20 years ago. It has settled down since. Some things in language are pretty arbitrary, and

As the article mentions, Germany had a big battle around such changes 20 years ago. It has settled down since. Some things in language are pretty arbitrary, and if it's a sufficiently small group of changes, it's probably no big deal to make that change. Matters would be totally different for English I guess ;) In general I would oppose changes to the language by committee, in particular politically motivated ones, but this seems to be fairly uncontroversial (only that it defies tradition, but "natural" changes in language do so too).

wolfgke 11y ago
The problem in the new German spelling was rather that lots of things simply did not make sense. For example: "Gemse" (old spelling, which is also how you speak it) vs. "Gämse" (new spelling that was "intended" to be derived from "Gams". Unluckily "Gams" is a dialect word, while "Gemse" is the original German one). Or an IMHO even more drastic example "aufwendig" (old spelling; also how you speak it) vs. "aufwändig" (new spelling). The official reason is that aufwendig/aufwändig is derived from the noun "Aufwand". But you can also give good reasons why it makes sense to derive it from the verb "aufwenden". No person could explain me the reason why the noun was chosen over the verb. So yes, I am open to a sane spelling reform. But the one that was implemented in Germany clearly wasn't. If you want to do a spelling reform for the deep impact it will have, it must be (nearly) perfect - an analog in software engineering is "lots of nines of availability". If you are not able to reach this gold standard you better leave it.
- elcapitan 11y ago
  I agree, they should have changed the verb "aufwenden" to "aufwänden", to make it completely consistent: "Aufwand"-"aufwänden"-"aufwändig". Other than that, I didn't mean to take that as an example of a great implementation. It's just that it happened and it didn't cause too many deaths, from what I remember.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    > I agree, they should have changed the verb "aufwenden" to "aufwänden", to make it completely consistent But then you also have to change "wenden" -> "wänden" and "abwenden" zu "abwänden". If we conjugate this, we get "ich wände mich ab" (1st person singular). But unluckily "ich wände mich ab" is already the Conjunctive II of "abwenden" (also 1st person singular). So the consequences of changing the the spelling of "aufwenden" are much deeper than it looks on the first view. My answer is rather to find an abstract, but completely general rule from which words adjectives are to be derived: the noun or the verb.

wolfgke 11y ago

The problem in the new German spelling was rather that lots of things simply did not make sense. For example: "Gemse" (old spelling, which is also how you speak it) vs. "Gämse" (new spelling that was "intended" to be derived from "Gams". Unluckily "Gams" is a dialect word, while "Gemse" is the original German one). Or an IMHO even more drastic example "aufwendig" (old spelling; also how you speak it) vs. "aufwändig" (new spelling). The official reason is that aufwendig/aufwändig is derived from the noun "Aufwand". But you can also give good reasons why it makes sense to derive it from the verb "aufwenden". No person could explain me the reason why the noun was chosen over the verb. So yes, I am open to a sane spelling reform. But the one that was implemented in Germany clearly wasn't. If you want to do a spelling reform for the deep impact it will have, it must be (nearly) perfect - an analog in software engineering is "lots of nines of availability". If you are not able to reach this gold standard you better leave it.

elcapitan 11y ago
I agree, they should have changed the verb "aufwenden" to "aufwänden", to make it completely consistent: "Aufwand"-"aufwänden"-"aufwändig". Other than that, I didn't mean to take that as an example of a great implementation. It's just that it happened and it didn't cause too many deaths, from what I remember.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > I agree, they should have changed the verb "aufwenden" to "aufwänden", to make it completely consistent But then you also have to change "wenden" -> "wänden" and "abwenden" zu "abwänden". If we conjugate this, we get "ich wände mich ab" (1st person singular). But unluckily "ich wände mich ab" is already the Conjunctive II of "abwenden" (also 1st person singular). So the consequences of changing the the spelling of "aufwenden" are much deeper than it looks on the first view. My answer is rather to find an abstract, but completely general rule from which words adjectives are to be derived: the noun or the verb.