Quote:
Originally Posted by Doitsu
More precisely, it was a coordinated effort by bored, tenured Germanists, because the unwanted reform met with great resistance and ultimately achieved very few of its lofty goals and actually added to the confusion, because it made some reformed spellings optional.
For example, one of the leading German spelling add-ons now offers a spell-check function for 5(!) different flavors of German.
BTW, nowadays the only tell-tale sign of a text in "reformed" German is the spelling of dass, which used to be written daß. ("ß" is now only used after long vowels and diphthongs.) |
Many people, myself included, think that it was a way for publishing houses to make money: all school textbooks had to be replaced. I was luckily alady in college when new spelling reform was passed, but when I read how people spell in online forums today, it appears to me that they made spelling worse. Before, everybody knew exactky that you spelled "because" with ß and that there was always a comma in front of it. Now, you see it with or without the double-s, with or without the comma. It's such a mess.
And, to have various options for the same word, as is the case with so many nowadays, is just straight confusing. Whenever I look at what my nephew writes, I have no clue if he misspelled anything.