Spellingreforms and language change

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by xendula

I never learned it this way; it always was SS in capital letters. Maybe it differs from country to country? I went to school in Germany.

I looked it up. The spelling reform of 1996 abolished it completely, so just use "ss".

Given that ß is, in fact, a ligature of s and z, not to mention the common German name of "Eszett", however, "sz" is still occasionally used, perhaps by the (slightly?) older generation.

[Kumabjorn]

+1 on HarryT.
The things you can pick up in an erudite forum like this never seize to astound me.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by xendula

The is no transliteration that I know of. Funny, I always use ss for ß, since that's also what I would use when capitalizing (there is no capital ß).

Unicode solves some things, especially larger newspapers now use diacritics (maybe they now have Romanian keyboards?), but most bloggers still don't.

We had such problems in the early 1990s - I think ö, ü, ä and õ were mostly fine (although õ could create some problems), but even national newspapers were at first when switching over to computers forced to use zh for ž and sometimes even sh for š. Fortunately that era didn't last long.

Nowadays it's only people who have moved abroad and haven't realised that on most computers you can switch keyboard layouts (and aren't familiar with the Alt+numpad combinations on full keyboards, don't have a full keyboard or can't be bothered) who don't use proper letters - but outside telegrams in the days gone by, I've never seen anyone use oe for ö or ae for ä etc. Generally people just use the letters without umlauts (it's not really a "letter + umlaut" combination in Estonian, ö, ä, ü and ö are separate letters in the alphabet, as are š and ž) as it's clear enough from the context what they stand for, but there is also a tendency by some to use y for ü, 2 for ä, 8 for ö and 6 for õ.

Phone keyboards, even pre-touchscreen or qwerty-keyboard days, included proper letters ages ago - they're perhaps more cumbersome to use, but they're there.

As for spelling reforms - I'm not sure we've ever had a proper official "reform"; it looks like it's been a gradual change. There's a very noticeable change between the current spelling and even late 19th / early 20the century spelling, though, as the people prescribing spelling and grammar rules for us before 20th century tended to be Germans.

Modern Estonian is almost completely phonetical - one major difference with e.g. German (but also most other Indo-European languages I'm familiar with) is that in Estonian, long sounds are generally written with a double letter. I'm fairly sure this change went into effect already at some point during the 19th century, but earlier texts written in Estonian can be very hard to read, both because of the "unnatural" spelling & grammar and because earlier texts tended to be written down by Germans. Once you get used to double consonants actually denoting short vowel sounds and single consonants denoting long vowel sounds, it's easier (the language itself hasn't changed that much), but I do struggle somewhat with earlier texts.

We have the occasional minor changes now, mostly in the spelling or declension of specific words (and some changes regarding capitalisation of proper names and place names that function as descriptive terms / indeclinable adjectives), but again, this tends to be an on-going process, not part of any major reforms.

[Sweetpea]

The major change for the Dutch language was in 1934.
The major changes:

1. abolition of declension for cases (e.g. den heer for accusative form of “de heer” (the gentleman))
2. oo and ee at the end of open syllables (zoo (so), heeten (to be called)) changed to zo and heten, but ee at the end of a word remained (zee (sea)).
3. unpronounced 'ch' in words like mensch (person/human) and visch (fish) disappeared.

Especially the points 2 and 3 are the reason why older books (from before that time) are very difficult to read now.

There have been at least two changes of language since I left school. I have no idea anymore how to correctly spell...

[xendula]

Sweetpea, the abolition of declension for cases?! As in, all of them? Were they not used any more, or did they just decide it's time to change the language? It seems a bit drastic.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by xendula

Sweetpea, the abolition of declension for cases?! As in, all of them? Were they not used any more, or did they just decide it's time to change the language? It seems a bit drastic.

Much the same's been happening in English for years. There are very few of us left who either know or care about the difference between "who" (subject) and "whom" (object), to give but one example.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

That's because he spelled it that way. No messing with proper names

There is also the city of Coesfeld which is actually pronounced as "Coosfeld", not as "Cösfeld".

The Rechtschreibreform was an act of political arrogance but as in the law of unintended consequences it has resulted in a far more variance in accepted spelling.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Much the same's been happening in English for years. There are very few of us left who either know or care about the difference between "who" (subject) and "whom" (object), to give but one example.

Yes, for the English language, "whom" came to mind when I read this, but that's about the only one. The way Sweetpea wrote it, it sounded like they abolished all cases apart from nominative. That's drastic, unless they were already not used any more.

And, how sad would it be if whom were to be abolished! True, many native English speakers don't use it any more, or don't use it correcly, but to declared it dead!?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by xendula

Yes, for the English language, "whom" came to mind when I read this, but that's about the only one. The way Sweetpea wrote it, it sounded like they abolished all cases apart from nominative. That's drastic, unless they were already not used any more.

And, how sad would it be if whom were to be abolished! True, many native English speakers don't use it any more, or don't use it correcly, but to declared it dead!?

Cases and declensions began dying out in spoken Dutch in the 1400's. A little earlier than thee and thou in English.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Cases and declensions began dying out in spoken Dutch in the 1400's. A little earlier than thee and thou in English.

I must point out that "thee" and "thou" are alive and well in a number of spoken dialects of British English, including the part of England where I live.

[Kumabjorn]

Come and get the modern version of Ernest Hemmingway's "For Who the Bell Toll, you know", it's awesome.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Cases and declensions began dying out in spoken Dutch in the 1400's. A little earlier than thee and thou in English.

Ah, that explains it, then! I guess the change was not that dramatic after all.

[Fbone]

I just looked at a German keyboard on Wikipedia to see where they put the extra "letters." This caused some movement of punctuation marks.

I also noticed the "y" and "z" exchanged places. For those that write in both English and German do you keep hitting the wrong letter? Or do you switch layouts?

For some reason I didn't think German used all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. I must be thinking of another language.

[HarryT]

Keyboard layouts can be a problem. When I was working in the US it took me weeks to get used to the layout of a US keyboard (the letters are in the same place as on a UK keyboard, but almost all the symbols and punctuation are in different places).

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I just looked at a German keyboard on Wikipedia to see where they put the extra "letters." This caused some movement of punctuation marks.

Exactly. Some signs are a little more difficult to get to with a German layout, notably the non-regular brackets, i.e. [] and {} as well as ~ and \. But then, only programmers really need them on a daily basis Oh, and @ and €, of course.

I also noticed the "y" and "z" exchanged places.

Apart from the additional umlauts, this is indeed the main difference. The QWERTZ layout is quite similar to the QWERTY, apart from that.

For those that write in both English and German do you keep hitting the wrong letter? Or do you switch layouts?

It's usually best to stick with one layout, even when writing different languages. Switching is possible, of course, but you're prone to make many mistakes for the first few days...

French keyboards are the worst. I never really got used to the AZERTY layout during my year in France.