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As a german, what I prefer about english spelling: * You do not capitalize Nouns in your Sentences which is means I don't have to analyse the lexical Structure

As a german, what I prefer about english spelling: * You do not capitalize Nouns in your Sentences which is means I don't have to analyse the lexical Structure of a Sentence while writting stuff. Stuff that is hard in English but rarely talked about because of the prominence of the phonetics-vs-traditional spelling: * hyphenation (fairly complex, basically one needs to look it up or rely on tooling in english, rarely taught). * punctuation, especially placement of commas * capitalization in headings (a bit confusing, conflicting recommendations) Oh and as for german there are a lot of strange things buried in what superficially looks like a fairly ok system. * Typically you can infer from the roots of a word whether to spell with `e' or `ä' (i.e. schälen (to peel) is spelled with ä because it stems from Schale [peel]). But for some words that doesn't apply, for example Mehl (flour) is related to `mahlen' (to grind), but not spelled "Mähl". * Auslautverhärtung is not spelled out but implied. I.e. Hund (dog) is kind of pronounced as if it would end with a -t ("Hunt"), whereas "Hunde" (dogs) has a soft d sound. Turkish makes such things explicit (compare `kitap` and `kitabi`). If we went down the turkish route, we could introduce a soft-s and hard-s distinction in the alphabet (maybe z vs s) and get rid of the `ß/ss` mess. * `sch` should be replaced by Ş, w -> v (with existing spellings of v being replaced by f where necessary ("von" -> "fon"), z -> "ts", etc. There is an obscure swiss organisation promoting a spelling reform for German(that differs from my suggestions) https://www.ortografie.ch https://www.ortografie.ch Its focus is a lot on vocal lengths and capitalization. Kind of interesting stuff (that will never make its way into the maintstream).

soared 6y ago
The nice thing about English if that with punctuation you can make up your own rules - pretty much. I toss in hyphens and stuff all the time... Just match how you talk with how you write, and it reads very naturally.
dgellow 6y ago
> and get rid of the `ß/ss` mess. Swiss Standard German got rid of ß :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Standard_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Standard_German
- wirrbel 6y ago
  yeah, but they didn't get rid of the mess, they kind of made it harder for German-learners to pronounce a written word (in comparison to the post-reform federal german spelling). i.e. "Fuß" vs swiss "Fuss" Swiss spelling makes it appear as if "Fuss" (with a long u) could be pronounced like "Nuss" (with a short u), whereas standard German "Fuß" is clear on that. Prior to the German spelling reform, Nuss was also written "Nuß" and back then the swiss way of spelling had the appeal of avoiding an extra character that is specific to the german language (and wasn't found on french typewriters for example). What I meant was a spelling like "Fus, Füse, Nuss, Nüsse" but "Gras, Gräzer" (instead of Gras Gräser). z would be the soft s-sound represented by s in traditional german spelling. s would be the hard s sound represented by ß or s in traditional german spelling.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    Not only that, ß is useful because it disambiguates some words that only differ in usage of ss vs. ß (and in their pronunciation), e.g. Masse (mass) != Maße (measures).
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Fuss is because we have both french è é à and german ü ö ä on our keyboards, so we don't have room for ß. Luckily for shell scripting, $ is unshifted (shifted would be £. I far prefer USD GBP CHF etc.) (nonante-neuf > quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. Fais-moi changer d'avis :-) )
- lqet 6y ago
  Yes, and now it is considered healthy for the Swiss to drink masses of beer ("in Maßen" vs. "in Massen") and if you have to pay a fine, you apparently have to pay in buses ("Buße" vs. "Busse"). I could never understand why Swiss Standard German went for a ß -> ss substitution, and not for a ß -> sz substitution, which would've avoided this particular mess and would've also been historically more correct. Now you have to teach children in school that a vocal before a double s is short, but only of the double s was not originally a ß which was originally an sz, so not a double consonant at all. Simple!
JadeNB 6y ago
> punctuation, especially placement of commas If it's any consolation, in my experience, no two native English speakers can agree on where and how often commas are needed either.
- wirrbel 6y ago
  exactly. That is not really desirable. Also I think there is a ruleset that is just not really applied by most. That is problematic because it allows for people without good intentions to be strict marking up some students while being lenient with others (a double standard situation).
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> As a german, what I prefer about english spelling... You do not capitalize Nouns in your Sentences In the late 19th and early 20th centuries when German was still a lingua franca of various scientific fields (linguistics, archaeology), it actually was the practice of some writers outside Germany to not capitalize nouns. One sees this in many German-language scholarly publications from Sweden and Finland, for example.
canjobear 6y ago
I find the noun capitalization in German nice because there's no ambiguity about whether you should capitalize. Whereas in English we capitalize "proper names" but it's not always clear what is a proper name, and I always have to look up if you're supposed to capitalize things like prepositions in movie titles.
- jan_Inkepa 6y ago
  German-as-a-Second-language speaker here - There's a lot of ambiguity and corner cases about what's a noun in German when you drill down to it (It maybe doesn't seem a problem coming English because you don't have to decide every time you write a word whether it's a noun or not). And Germans in highschool are drilled in this apparently, so many grow to hate it a bit. For example, take 'ein Paar'\'ein paar' (a pair) - in english you say oh pair is a noun so great. But in german whether you write it big or small depends on whether you're using it as an indefinite pronoun or a noun. You can apparently use it to distinguish a pair of trousers (in Paar Hosen) from a pair of trousers (ein paar Hosen), though don't ask me which is which... And there are some fossilised expressions where even though things are nouns they're written small (e.g. 'durch dick und dünn' (through thick and thin.) ), and there are cases of capitalising things that sure look like adjectives though...I don't know how linguistics classify the parts of speech formally... Or another example - if say "I take part" ("ich nehme teil") in something, is 'part' a noun? The german sentence is a word-for-word translation of the english, and 'Teil' is a noun in german (meaning 'part'), but you don't capitalise it because teil is part of the verb 'teilnehmen' and not independently a noun in this context. (here's my personal menagerie of capitalisation rules for German: https://gist.github.com/increpare/b5d652b535656b794c47a77c1d98e50c https://gist.github.com/increpare/b5d652b535656b794c47a77c1d... , and here's a relevant page (in German) by Duden, one of the two main authorities on German orthography - https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/Groß-%20und%20Kleinschreibung https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/Groß-%2... . It's not a short page, and not something that comes intuitively to people. They learn this stuff). All that said, I like German orthography! I enjoy compound words and (plus or minus edge cases) its approach to capitalisation.
  - canjobear 6y ago

soared 6y ago

The nice thing about English if that with punctuation you can make up your own rules - pretty much. I toss in hyphens and stuff all the time... Just match how you talk with how you write, and it reads very naturally.

dgellow 6y ago

> and get rid of the `ß/ss` mess. Swiss Standard German got rid of ß :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Standard_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Standard_German

wirrbel 6y ago
yeah, but they didn't get rid of the mess, they kind of made it harder for German-learners to pronounce a written word (in comparison to the post-reform federal german spelling). i.e. "Fuß" vs swiss "Fuss" Swiss spelling makes it appear as if "Fuss" (with a long u) could be pronounced like "Nuss" (with a short u), whereas standard German "Fuß" is clear on that. Prior to the German spelling reform, Nuss was also written "Nuß" and back then the swiss way of spelling had the appeal of avoiding an extra character that is specific to the german language (and wasn't found on french typewriters for example). What I meant was a spelling like "Fus, Füse, Nuss, Nüsse" but "Gras, Gräzer" (instead of Gras Gräser). z would be the soft s-sound represented by s in traditional german spelling. s would be the hard s sound represented by ß or s in traditional german spelling.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Not only that, ß is useful because it disambiguates some words that only differ in usage of ss vs. ß (and in their pronunciation), e.g. Masse (mass) != Maße (measures).
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Fuss is because we have both french è é à and german ü ö ä on our keyboards, so we don't have room for ß. Luckily for shell scripting, $ is unshifted (shifted would be £. I far prefer USD GBP CHF etc.) (nonante-neuf > quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. Fais-moi changer d'avis :-) )
lqet 6y ago
Yes, and now it is considered healthy for the Swiss to drink masses of beer ("in Maßen" vs. "in Massen") and if you have to pay a fine, you apparently have to pay in buses ("Buße" vs. "Busse"). I could never understand why Swiss Standard German went for a ß -> ss substitution, and not for a ß -> sz substitution, which would've avoided this particular mess and would've also been historically more correct. Now you have to teach children in school that a vocal before a double s is short, but only of the double s was not originally a ß which was originally an sz, so not a double consonant at all. Simple!

JadeNB 6y ago

> punctuation, especially placement of commas If it's any consolation, in my experience, no two native English speakers can agree on where and how often commas are needed either.

wirrbel 6y ago
exactly. That is not really desirable. Also I think there is a ruleset that is just not really applied by most. That is problematic because it allows for people without good intentions to be strict marking up some students while being lenient with others (a double standard situation).

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> As a german, what I prefer about english spelling... You do not capitalize Nouns in your Sentences In the late 19th and early 20th centuries when German was still a lingua franca of various scientific fields (linguistics, archaeology), it actually was the practice of some writers outside Germany to not capitalize nouns. One sees this in many German-language scholarly publications from Sweden and Finland, for example.

canjobear 6y ago

I find the noun capitalization in German nice because there's no ambiguity about whether you should capitalize. Whereas in English we capitalize "proper names" but it's not always clear what is a proper name, and I always have to look up if you're supposed to capitalize things like prepositions in movie titles.

jan_Inkepa 6y ago
German-as-a-Second-language speaker here - There's a lot of ambiguity and corner cases about what's a noun in German when you drill down to it (It maybe doesn't seem a problem coming English because you don't have to decide every time you write a word whether it's a noun or not). And Germans in highschool are drilled in this apparently, so many grow to hate it a bit. For example, take 'ein Paar'\'ein paar' (a pair) - in english you say oh pair is a noun so great. But in german whether you write it big or small depends on whether you're using it as an indefinite pronoun or a noun. You can apparently use it to distinguish a pair of trousers (in Paar Hosen) from a pair of trousers (ein paar Hosen), though don't ask me which is which... And there are some fossilised expressions where even though things are nouns they're written small (e.g. 'durch dick und dünn' (through thick and thin.) ), and there are cases of capitalising things that sure look like adjectives though...I don't know how linguistics classify the parts of speech formally... Or another example - if say "I take part" ("ich nehme teil") in something, is 'part' a noun? The german sentence is a word-for-word translation of the english, and 'Teil' is a noun in german (meaning 'part'), but you don't capitalise it because teil is part of the verb 'teilnehmen' and not independently a noun in this context. (here's my personal menagerie of capitalisation rules for German: https://gist.github.com/increpare/b5d652b535656b794c47a77c1d98e50c https://gist.github.com/increpare/b5d652b535656b794c47a77c1d... , and here's a relevant page (in German) by Duden, one of the two main authorities on German orthography - https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/Groß-%20und%20Kleinschreibung https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/Groß-%2... . It's not a short page, and not something that comes intuitively to people. They learn this stuff). All that said, I like German orthography! I enjoy compound words and (plus or minus edge cases) its approach to capitalisation.
- canjobear 6y ago