(no subject)
4/12/10 21:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scarletmorningI honestly don't understand the orthography reform and the people behind it. I mean, everything started with the monks; there were no rules, barely anyone could write or read anyway. They had to find a way to write words so that other people could understand them. Therefore they wrote the words in the same way they pronounced them. So for example if they pronounced "Geoffrey" as "Jofri" then they would write "Jofri" (Just had to use that example XD). Of course every cloister had different orthography rules because of the lovely dialects. But it worked for a time. And do you know what happened next? Monks wandered and lived in different cloisters. They saw that this cloister had different rules and adapted them. Then they left again and took the new rules with them. In the next cloister they learned new rules again. But they not only learned new rules, no, the monks in the cloister learned new rules as well. That way the rules merged and many variants disappeared. That went on until there were a few major "schools" of orthography. Because of different developments and for many reasons, the population (the printing and writing population) decided that they liked one variant more than the other.
Then the reformists came. They thought that we need a rule book. Which is a good idea, of course. It makes everything easier, or at least it should. But then some people thought "Hey, back then everything was better! Let's set back our orthography´s timetable because medieval people had an awesome orthography!". And I don't understand it >:( No, it was not better back then, Jakob Grimm. Do you know how many variants the word "Fuß" had back then? More than ten! And no, it's not that smart to eliminate the capitalization of nouns. Not if you can't identify the noun by its position in the sentence! You can do that in English. English has a rule about the position of the noun. German doesn't have one! Theoretically you can put the subject wherever you want! You want to put it at the very end of the sentence? You can. You probably wouldn't do that, but you can. You want to put it in the middle? You can! You want to put the verb somewhere else? Yes, you can even do that! Okay, maybe that is a bit over the top. Of course there are other means to identify a noun, a suffix for example. But what if you have a noun that looks like a verb? Or what if the noun has no suffix?
Short, it was not better back then. Stop trying to reverse the natural flow of language and orthography. Don't like how the majority writes a word? That's bad, because people will not necessarily write it the way you want it. Sure, you can put the rule in a dictionary, but the chance that the development will start again -- this time maybe in an other direction -- is big and you can do nothing against it.
And for love´s sake, please research first and make the reform after that! That didn't work 200 years ago and it doesn't work in the present. Make the changes where they need to be done and not where you think they are needed. Geez, people are stupid.
Puh, that was a rant. I'm reading a book about the history of the German language and the whole orthography reform stuff is just ridiculous and headdesk-worthy. It was just so strange and stupid that I had to rant ;p But the book has good stuff as well; there were some really interesting things on semantic changes and stuff. And I love our umlauts! They're awesome. I love them <3
Then the reformists came. They thought that we need a rule book. Which is a good idea, of course. It makes everything easier, or at least it should. But then some people thought "Hey, back then everything was better! Let's set back our orthography´s timetable because medieval people had an awesome orthography!". And I don't understand it >:( No, it was not better back then, Jakob Grimm. Do you know how many variants the word "Fuß" had back then? More than ten! And no, it's not that smart to eliminate the capitalization of nouns. Not if you can't identify the noun by its position in the sentence! You can do that in English. English has a rule about the position of the noun. German doesn't have one! Theoretically you can put the subject wherever you want! You want to put it at the very end of the sentence? You can. You probably wouldn't do that, but you can. You want to put it in the middle? You can! You want to put the verb somewhere else? Yes, you can even do that! Okay, maybe that is a bit over the top. Of course there are other means to identify a noun, a suffix for example. But what if you have a noun that looks like a verb? Or what if the noun has no suffix?
Short, it was not better back then. Stop trying to reverse the natural flow of language and orthography. Don't like how the majority writes a word? That's bad, because people will not necessarily write it the way you want it. Sure, you can put the rule in a dictionary, but the chance that the development will start again -- this time maybe in an other direction -- is big and you can do nothing against it.
And for love´s sake, please research first and make the reform after that! That didn't work 200 years ago and it doesn't work in the present. Make the changes where they need to be done and not where you think they are needed. Geez, people are stupid.
Puh, that was a rant. I'm reading a book about the history of the German language and the whole orthography reform stuff is just ridiculous and headdesk-worthy. It was just so strange and stupid that I had to rant ;p But the book has good stuff as well; there were some really interesting things on semantic changes and stuff. And I love our umlauts! They're awesome. I love them <3
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(no subject)
4/12/10 20:26 (UTC)I know nothing about German, but I seriously spend my free time looking at etymology and all that good stuff.
(no subject)
4/12/10 20:28 (UTC)(no subject)
4/12/10 20:34 (UTC)I'd say the things I geek out over the most are grammatical quirks and obscure word origins. not to mention my obsession with becoming a polyglot.
(no subject)
4/12/10 20:53 (UTC)(no subject)
4/12/10 21:21 (UTC)(no subject)
4/12/10 21:25 (UTC)German is awesome *is totally not biased* but hard to learn. :D But if you had no problems with Latin, you shouldn't have that much problems with German.
(no subject)
4/12/10 21:28 (UTC)So, is German your native language? I'm a bit intimidated by all the umlauts and odd capitalizations D:
(no subject)
4/12/10 21:31 (UTC)most of the time. We capitalize the nouns. All the other stuff is more special and depends on the sentence. But the umlauts are awesome~(no subject)
4/12/10 21:35 (UTC)I'm so uneducated. ;A;
(no subject)
4/12/10 21:40 (UTC)(no subject)
4/12/10 21:43 (UTC)getting my idea of German from these things is like getting one's idea of English from Jersey Shore. *gag*
(no subject)
4/12/10 21:50 (UTC)I'm still surprised that there's something like Fangirl!German. It never ceases to amuse me :D
(no subject)
4/12/10 21:55 (UTC)yes, alas, combining weeaboo and German and then running it through google translate seems to result in some very odd things. XD
(no subject)
4/12/10 21:58 (UTC)Also, what I forgot: I like your Fay icon. It's pretty.
(no subject)
4/12/10 22:12 (UTC)Aha, thank you <3 CLAMP is something of an obsession 8D