3 ms·

This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in Germany. There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all

This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in Germany. There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all founded under the umbrella of a quasi-propaganda organization that officially was just a society/club. [1] They created their own "purified" dictionary with a "clean language" that was trying to find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationalistic awareness with all its perks. It was so ridiculous and opinionated that they tried to even enforce the use of "Nagelindiewandschlageisen" instead of using the Swedish word hammer. They burned all their stuff in the war, but it's somewhat folklore that they were heavily involved with Goebbels and his propaganda in WW2. They got away with that during the Nuremberg trials so technically this is an accusation from my side. Culturally I think this is the opposite of what cultures should embrace. Languages will always evolve, and you cannot prevent that. As a side-note: Those were so puristic people that they even pissed off Adolf Hitler at some point, because they criticised him for using foreign words in his speeches. [1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allgemeiner_Deutscher_Sprachverein https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allgemeiner_Deutscher_Sprach...

hansworst 3y ago
I guess these were the only people to deserve the term “grammar nazi” then
za3faran 3y ago
Just because there was an incident involving an extremist group, does not make the whole thing wrong or incorrect. As a counter example, High Arabic has been meticulously preserved, and Arab speakers take pride in that fact, regardless of the many spoken dialects that exist.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- adjav 3y ago
  That's like saying Classical Latin has been meticulously preserved. Technically true, but entirely irrelevant.
  - za3faran 3y ago
    It's not, because High Arabic is used on a daily basis.
v-erne 3y ago
I'm rereading Orwell's 1984 and this all seems a bit like Ministry of Truth and its whole newspeak ordeal (of course MT was a bit more absurd - they wanted to get rid of all ambiguity in language also). I wonder if this was maybe Orwell inspiration?
- cookiengineer 3y ago
  The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 years... so I guess nope ;D But I agree with the similarities of the Ministry of Truth, and what it wanted to achieve. The issues as I mentioned is that I don't think there's a universal truth to anything; and therefore eradicating wordings or forms of language that are "not good" is a very subjective perspective.
  - v-erne 3y ago
    >> The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 years... so I guess nope ;D I do not understand - OP was mentioning that the organization worked through second world war and was event at Nurimberg trials. An Orwell written 1984 in 1949. What do you mean that this organization predates Orwell ? I was just insinuating that Orwell might have known about this history (and probably about similar like this) and use this as inspiration for how dictatorships can use purification of lanuguage for their purposes (in case of Orwell it was more about controling "thought crimes" then abount simple national identification).
- zowie_vd 3y ago
  The inspiration for Newspeak is Basic English, which is much like Esperanto but with English words (at least it's described as such — I'm not actually very familiar with Basic English myself). Constructed languages had some avid supporters back in the early 20th century, looking to make some constructed language the international language. Though I don't know much about Basic English, the unique looks of Newspeak definitely come, directly or indirectly, from Esperanto's ideas for keeping the vocabulary small and simple. To illustrate, in Esperanto the word for "good" is "bona", "bad" is "malbona" ("ungood"), and "to improve" is "plibonigi" ("to moregoodify").
egeozcan 3y ago
We still have Türk Dil Kurumu (Institute of Turkish Language) in Turkey. In their website, their motto is declared as "Our Language is our Identity" (Dilimiz Kimliğimizdir). They proposed so many silly words, at one point people were coming up with fake translations attributed to them and others were believing in those, turning them to urban legends. One such legend is my favorite: Turkish word: Tren (Train) Supposedly proposed translation: Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç Which can be translated to English somewhat literally as "Bottom pushed, top smoking, multi-person-saddle, bringer and deliverer of people" (My best attempt, perhaps GPTs can do better). However, the thing about them coming up with fake Turkish roots to foreign words (especially French) is totally true. One such example is "okul" (school) which comes from "l'école" but they long time argued that it came from the Turkish root "oku" which also means to study (among "read" and "send prayers"). There are thousands of "inventions" like these. The weird trend was (still is!) our tendency as a nation to invent Turkish language roots in words from other languages, which once lead to ridiculous stuff like the Sun Language Theory [0]. IM(not so)HO: All language institutes should be left in the past, as they tend to ignore the organic properties of the languages they are supposed to protect. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory
- lm28469 3y ago
  > My best attempt, perhaps GPTs can do better I doubt it's been trained on that, here is what it told me: > I'm sorry, but the phrase "Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç" appears to be a nonsensical combination of Turkish words. It doesn't have a clear meaning or context.
  - egeozcan 3y ago
    I had more luck! :) > try a literal translation for "Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç" >> ChatGPT: Sure, here's a literal translation of the original Turkish sentence: "Bring-take with a lot of lower-upper pushing-pulling, with many buttocked and seated ones." >> As you can see, the literal translation doesn't make much sense in English, and it loses the humor and rhythm of the original tongue twister. > try a better translation >> Certainly, here's a better translation of the original Turkish sentence that preserves the humor and rhythm: >> "Jostle and wiggle with seats too small or too big, to make it through this ride like a true champion of the middle." >> This translation captures the playful tone and the challenge of the original tongue twister, while using language that is more natural and understandable in English. Oh well :)
croisillon 3y ago
you seem to be the first result with "Nagelindiewandschlageisen" in Google (and i guess i'll now be second)
- cookiengineer 3y ago
  The issue with our digital library is that the search there is not indexed, and most old German texts are not searchable either [1] You can search for "Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein" or "Atlas der deutschen Sprache" or similar, you'll find references to it but not the scanned books. Welcome to the age of Digital Amnesia :'( [2] Maybe the dossier about the burned books of WW2 is a good start to find things about it, but it's kinda hopeless without a search index. Alternatively there seems to be a lend-able copy in the library of Dresden [3] and [4] [1] https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/ https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs [3] https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/verbrannte-buecher https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/verbra... [4] https://katalog.slub-dresden.de/id/0-130149888 https://katalog.slub-dresden.de/id/0-130149888
everybodyknows 3y ago
> ... find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationalistic awareness with all its perks. > They created their own "purified" dictionary ... So, the "Erhaltung" effort was not to preserve existing usage, but to create a new vocabulary aligned with the group's ethno-nationalist agenda. Seems very different from TFA's agenda.

hansworst 3y ago

I guess these were the only people to deserve the term “grammar nazi” then

za3faran 3y ago

Just because there was an incident involving an extremist group, does not make the whole thing wrong or incorrect. As a counter example, High Arabic has been meticulously preserved, and Arab speakers take pride in that fact, regardless of the many spoken dialects that exist.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
adjav 3y ago
That's like saying Classical Latin has been meticulously preserved. Technically true, but entirely irrelevant.
- za3faran 3y ago
  It's not, because High Arabic is used on a daily basis.

v-erne 3y ago

I'm rereading Orwell's 1984 and this all seems a bit like Ministry of Truth and its whole newspeak ordeal (of course MT was a bit more absurd - they wanted to get rid of all ambiguity in language also). I wonder if this was maybe Orwell inspiration?

cookiengineer 3y ago
The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 years... so I guess nope ;D But I agree with the similarities of the Ministry of Truth, and what it wanted to achieve. The issues as I mentioned is that I don't think there's a universal truth to anything; and therefore eradicating wordings or forms of language that are "not good" is a very subjective perspective.
- v-erne 3y ago
  >> The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 years... so I guess nope ;D I do not understand - OP was mentioning that the organization worked through second world war and was event at Nurimberg trials. An Orwell written 1984 in 1949. What do you mean that this organization predates Orwell ? I was just insinuating that Orwell might have known about this history (and probably about similar like this) and use this as inspiration for how dictatorships can use purification of lanuguage for their purposes (in case of Orwell it was more about controling "thought crimes" then abount simple national identification).
zowie_vd 3y ago
The inspiration for Newspeak is Basic English, which is much like Esperanto but with English words (at least it's described as such — I'm not actually very familiar with Basic English myself). Constructed languages had some avid supporters back in the early 20th century, looking to make some constructed language the international language. Though I don't know much about Basic English, the unique looks of Newspeak definitely come, directly or indirectly, from Esperanto's ideas for keeping the vocabulary small and simple. To illustrate, in Esperanto the word for "good" is "bona", "bad" is "malbona" ("ungood"), and "to improve" is "plibonigi" ("to moregoodify").

egeozcan 3y ago

We still have Türk Dil Kurumu (Institute of Turkish Language) in Turkey. In their website, their motto is declared as "Our Language is our Identity" (Dilimiz Kimliğimizdir). They proposed so many silly words, at one point people were coming up with fake translations attributed to them and others were believing in those, turning them to urban legends. One such legend is my favorite: Turkish word: Tren (Train) Supposedly proposed translation: Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç Which can be translated to English somewhat literally as "Bottom pushed, top smoking, multi-person-saddle, bringer and deliverer of people" (My best attempt, perhaps GPTs can do better). However, the thing about them coming up with fake Turkish roots to foreign words (especially French) is totally true. One such example is "okul" (school) which comes from "l'école" but they long time argued that it came from the Turkish root "oku" which also means to study (among "read" and "send prayers"). There are thousands of "inventions" like these. The weird trend was (still is!) our tendency as a nation to invent Turkish language roots in words from other languages, which once lead to ridiculous stuff like the Sun Language Theory [0]. IM(not so)HO: All language institutes should be left in the past, as they tend to ignore the organic properties of the languages they are supposed to protect. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Language_Theory

lm28469 3y ago
> My best attempt, perhaps GPTs can do better I doubt it's been trained on that, here is what it told me: > I'm sorry, but the phrase "Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç" appears to be a nonsensical combination of Turkish words. It doesn't have a clear meaning or context.
- egeozcan 3y ago
  I had more luck! :) > try a literal translation for "Alttan ittirmeli üstten tüttürmeli çok oturgaçlı getirgeçli götürgeç" >> ChatGPT: Sure, here's a literal translation of the original Turkish sentence: "Bring-take with a lot of lower-upper pushing-pulling, with many buttocked and seated ones." >> As you can see, the literal translation doesn't make much sense in English, and it loses the humor and rhythm of the original tongue twister. > try a better translation >> Certainly, here's a better translation of the original Turkish sentence that preserves the humor and rhythm: >> "Jostle and wiggle with seats too small or too big, to make it through this ride like a true champion of the middle." >> This translation captures the playful tone and the challenge of the original tongue twister, while using language that is more natural and understandable in English. Oh well :)

croisillon 3y ago

you seem to be the first result with "Nagelindiewandschlageisen" in Google (and i guess i'll now be second)

cookiengineer 3y ago
The issue with our digital library is that the search there is not indexed, and most old German texts are not searchable either [1] You can search for "Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein" or "Atlas der deutschen Sprache" or similar, you'll find references to it but not the scanned books. Welcome to the age of Digital Amnesia :'( [2] Maybe the dossier about the burned books of WW2 is a good start to find things about it, but it's kinda hopeless without a search index. Alternatively there seems to be a lend-able copy in the library of Dresden [3] and [4] [1] https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/ https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs [3] https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/verbrannte-buecher https://ausstellungen.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/verbra... [4] https://katalog.slub-dresden.de/id/0-130149888 https://katalog.slub-dresden.de/id/0-130149888

everybodyknows 3y ago

> ... find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationalistic awareness with all its perks. > They created their own "purified" dictionary ... So, the "Erhaltung" effort was not to preserve existing usage, but to create a new vocabulary aligned with the group's ethno-nationalist agenda. Seems very different from TFA's agenda.