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Spelling reform and the language learner | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5439 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 9 of 11 14 January 2010 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
You don't have to. The ß is replaced by ss only after short vowels. This was an awful mess before and now it is much easier for language learners and logical, because there are no exceptions to this rule. The same applies to triple consonants. I hear people complaining all the time that the "new" triple consonants look horrible, but they were there before the reform as well. The weird thing in the past was that Schiff-fahrt was written as Schiffahrt, but Sauerstoff-flasche was written Sauerstoffflasche. The rule was that triple consonants were written if and only if they were followed by another consonant. This nonsense was removed, along with some weird punctuation rules that hardly anyone knew anyway. The reform doesn't resolve all inconsistencies and it even introduces new ones, but that's just how it is with something as complex as a languages. From the perspective of a language learner it is easier now than it was before. Edited by OlafP on 14 January 2010 at 6:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5525 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 10 of 11 14 January 2010 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Both soft and hard signs are necessary unless you want to be guessing at pronounciation. What do you have against them? In a sense soft signs should be a modernist's dream, they indicate more or less the presence of a single articulatory feature, like if we were to write K and G like K and K*, the * indicating voicing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dripdrip Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5528 days ago 58 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Italian | Message 11 of 11 14 January 2010 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I, too, struggle with the reforms. I learnt German more than 30 years ago and 'dass' is just wrong as far as I'm concerned. I fell in love with ß as a teenager and, when I saw it italicised recently I understood why - ß looks like the old English fs, which I can't render properly with a keyboard.
I also capitalise Du and Dein, but so do all my German colleagues, even the young ones. Most of them don't have much time for the reforms, either. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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