Horizon

Language is a human system but it is not made by humans, as a wave travels through a medium but is not made of it. That's what makes language interesting to me, and I think it's the conflation of these two concepts that leads people to suppose they can legislate it.

In a sense, to bring up the whole "Wisdom of Crowds" meme again, language could be seen as the ultimate example of groupthink. Is there a decision market model of linguistic change waiting in the wings? Anyone know whether anyone has talked about this before?

I hadn't heard anything about the changes in the first place. Any idea on what they were?

Well, as far as I know they are all graphical. They were supposed to abandon the ß character, called eszet, which stands in for what would otherwise be a double s. Although, surprisingly, it turns out that the new rules still include special cases where the eszet would be used. Which is weird because I'm almost positive that the letter is never necessary to distinguish between different words.

It also includes breaking up massively long words and a stupid meddling in the rules for capitalizing nouns which, because, presumably because no one could agree on how far to take it, ended up being more complicated rather than less (as I take it happened with the eszet, too).

This site looks like a good outline of the changes, though I haven't read through all of it.

German generally has very conservative spelling conventions. The eszet isn't used in any other language in the world. It almost seems as if Germans have a complex about that, as if they are somehow behind the times and old-fashioned. But of course that appeals just as strongly to other people, hence the controversy.

Thanks for the link. I find a lot of the reforms to be very silly indeed -- particularly the eszet. Since it's simply a ligature of a long S and a final S, it just seems dumb to have come up with a spelling rule that only gets rid of the thing half the time.

That said, the Fremdwoerter reforms seem worth doing. Anyone who's had to learn the difference between telephonieren, anrufen, and Fernsprecher has wished that the Germans would finally make up their minds on this.

All I can find on foreign words involves whether to naturlize the spelling or not. Is there more to it than that?

The eszet reform makes sense. Previously, eszet was used after a long vowel or when it was not followed by a vowel. Double s was used after a short vowel.

The reform says only use eszet after a long vowel. This way it is completely clear whether the vowel is long or short: eszet after a long vowel, double s after a short vowel.

examples.

I find it strange that this met with so much resistance, since it is simpler and gives a better clue to the pronunciation.

I don't think that all spelling reforms are doomed to failure. Swedish had a reform in 1906 where they did away with reduntant letters.