Spelling reform

A spelling reform is the change in the law central components of the spelling of a language. The first two spelling reforms in the German language area took place in 1876 and 1901. The third and most recent was the reform of German orthography from 1996.

Types of spelling reforms internationally

There are two basic types of spelling reform. The a reformed orthography with a new list of words. This approach is common in France for example. So changed the Académie française in 1740, with its dictionary the spelling of several thousand words at a time. On the other hand, a spelling reform but also reform the spelling rules, most recently in 1996 in the German-speaking countries, as among other things, new rules for the use of double -s and ß ( " hate " instead of " hatred " ), to triple consonants ( " shipping " instead of " waterways), " for upper and lower case letters, the spelling of foreign words ( " Dolphin "instead of" Dolphin " ), adopted for the divergence sensitive compound words and punctuation, as well as to separate words at end of line. Many spelling reforms failed already on the decision-making level or were from the writer's guild, journalists and writers, not be accepted. Others took some time until they were manifest, and were therefore more likely to laying the foundation stone of reform. Thus, the German spelling reform of 1876 was quite progressive clean up with the " accompanying h" ( " do " instead of " do "); enforced but which was only 25 years later in the reform of 1901.

In some countries established language academies for the maintenance of the language and possibly changes in language and spelling rules are responsible. The longest tradition, the Italian Accademia della Crusca, followed by the Académie française in Paris. The latter was created in 1635 as a national French institution to "simplify and maintenance of the French language " and is recognized until today largely in the entire French -speaking world, so for example, in Quebec, Canada. In English-speaking countries lack such a higher-level language and write instance. The German takes between these two extremes, a middle position.

Spelling reform of the German language

Approach and commitment

The German States (federal and state ) can and indeed may adopt rules for language and spelling, but the force of law do not have these rules. This means that the individual citizen can not be required to comply with a particular spelling.

Was confirmed that in Germany by a decision by the German Bundestag on 26 March 1998 Resolution " The language belongs to the people ." Only for those individuals who are in a special legal situation between ( civil servants, judges, soldiers, students, pupils ) to the state or legal persons of public law, the spelling is binding including reformed rules. For an administrative regulation provides.

Thus, the same rules will apply in all parts of the public administration, the judiciary and the schools of Germany and is applied in the daily management in the federal government (usually the Minister of the Interior ) and each of the 16 states have the German spelling formally as administrative regulation adopted.

In practice, this is achieved by the Standing Conference decisions on spelling sums that are then adopted by both the federal and the provincial administration of administrative orders.

In Austria, in the official language of the Austrian dictionary in its latest edition binding, which is based on the decisions of the governing schools Ministry of Education, on whose behalf it is issued. Special regulations are not necessary for this in general.

Previous reforms

In German-speaking two orthographic conferences were held, where in addition to the aim of unifying the German orthography also further reform proposals were discussed. Primarily, they led to the desired standardization of spelling. The first reform failed; their ideas were widely implemented in the second reform:

• 4 to 15 January 1876 " conference to produce larger agreement in the field of German orthography " ( I. Orthographic Conference ) in Berlin;
• 17 to 19 June 1901 " discussion on the unity of German Spelling " ( II Orthographic Conference ) in Berlin.

Both conferences were in the public eye and have been hotly debated in particular by the national daily newspapers such as the Cologne Gazette:

"We have seen that the vowels aou and their umlauts are to be exempt from the doubling and parasites h. In this list we unfortunately miss e and i These poor letters are condemned because of their Dünnleibigkeit, lugging around the wrong aspirate as eternal load with it; take, steal, and return similar words remain in that stall angles are where the purifying waters of the Alpheus should not penetrate. "

The official spelling of the Germans changed in the last hundred years in almost imperceptible details of dictionary output to dictionary edition. So, for example, appeared in the 14th edition of the Duden, 1954, the integrated case couch next to couch on which dates back to the failed spelling reform of the Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust by 1944. In the 13th edition of 1947, she was not provided. She disappeared in the 80s again from the dictionaries. No later than 1941, the integrated case mayonnaise was added next to mayonnaise in the Duden (1941 but still considered " expendable " variant selected) and has since been found in every edition. Not only keywords, and rules could change. So it is still called in the 10th edition of the Duden 1929: " For ß SZ is applied in large font "; later was SZ only as a possibility in addition to SS, to avoid confusion in cases like MASZE - to avoid MASS.

The current reform

See: reform of German orthography from 1996 (including the revisions of 2004 and 2006)

Spelling reforms in other languages

Reforms of the spelling there were among others in the following other languages:

• Armenian language
• Bulgarian Language
• Danish Language 1948
• French language
• Dutch language
• Russian language
• Turkish language in 1929

So the ph and rh was abolished by the Netherlands in words of Greek origin, the Swedish ph, rh and th. As in several other languages ​​historical forms have disappeared at an early stage, the majority of Latin writing Europeans writes today teater, teatro or teatr for theater.

In some other languages, however, it is very unlikely that it will ever come to a spelling reform, since it lacks an instance that could decide and enforce such a reform, or because no sufficient will to recognize this. This includes in particular English.

The spelling of the English language has indeed, even without that took place a formal reform, changed significantly since the 16th century, but further reform attempts failed for the most part. The only significant exceptions were the proposals of Noah Webster, some of which are fully implemented in North America and on the back a large part of today's differences between American and British spelling.

Other attempts at reform is one among others The campaign, which was founded in England in 1908 Simplified Spelling Society ( SSS, today Spelling Society), the goal sat down to reduce the irregularities of English spelling. Many celebrities joined the campaign, including George Bernard Shaw and Isaac Pitman. In the U.S. had proposed steps to simplify the spelling of the English language, among others, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Morse, and later Mark Twain. In particular, the American William Thornton, born in the West Indies, has been employed since 1785 with the simplification of English spelling, which emanated from his intention to improve the lives of the slaves who were mostly illiterate.

Little or no potential for reform and demand exists in languages ​​that are traditionally written phonologically:

• Italian Language: There was observed, the Italian literary language around 1600 in addition to the many Italians no longer correct spoken Latin.
• Serbian Language: There has been replaced by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić 1800 slawenoserbische the traditional with the modern literary language.
• Croatian language: simultaneously a similar language reform. In 1850 the creation of a common Serbo-Croatian language was agreed upon; the agreement became obsolete after the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1990 for political reasons.
• Hungarian Language: It was in the 19th century, several spelling reforms, to make them phonologically.
• Slovak language: it was (again) newly created in the 19th century, first west Slovakian based, then medium Slovak dialects.
• Esperanto: The Language has emerged as a written language, and places great emphasis on regularity. Basic rules of pronunciation and then the language practice have led to a uniform pronunciation, so that, for example, international meetings and radio broadcasts are possible.

In the Finnish language once a radical spelling reform was carried out by switching from an etymological on a phonological rule system.

Only partly as spelling reform can call the simplification of a Ideogrammsystems:

• Chinese writing

When changing the font only the characters approximately 1:1 were partially exchanged:

• Romanian - change from Cyrillic to Latin characters
• Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Uzbek - each in the 1990s transition from Cyrillic to Latin characters; initially planned in the Kazakh language and the Kyrgyz language until 2010, but then postponed indefinitely.

In other cases, learning the writing was much easier:

• Turkish - Thanks to the Latin characters the spoken language is much better represented than before by the Arab. However, in words of Arabic origin was lost etymology. For example, fall Arabic Kaf ( ك ) and Arabic Qaf ( ق ) in Turkish pronunciation and Latin letters to K together, such as in kalp ( "heart" ) of Arabic قلب - qalb ( "heart" ) as opposed to كلب calf ( "dog" ).
• Korean - Here Chinese logograms were partially replaced by Hangul characters. Also used for a long time, Hangul is a phonemic alphabet despite the unusual for Europeans graphical arrangement.