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Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>
acadamh.ucd.ie>A few weeks ago I posted a query on the List with regard to the proposed spelling changes of German, with a question on the electronic transcription of German, as well as any other language that people might be familiar with. I received 22 replies in total. The influence of the media used was in evidence as many of the replies dealt only with the e-mail question. I hope I replied adequately to all responses, if not, or if your name is missing from the list of respondants below, my apologies. Thanks to all who contributed. 1) On the main question, that of German spelling reform, there were 14 specific responses, of which only 3 were for spelling reform in general in German, 3 more felt reform could be needed, but that the recent proposals were not what was required. Seven were more or less against reform, with one reply non-committal, though noting that others felt a need for change. Reasons given against changes included disturbing the natural progression of the language (which will change in its own time), or where moves to a too-phonetic spelling would have consequences on dialectal pronunciation; on the for side, ease of learning for children and those with learning diffuculties was the main response. 2) On the subject of e-mail, there were 16 responses for German, 6 for other languages. I asked if <ae, ss> were the most common way of sending umlauts and eszett (or 'sharfes es' or even 'dreierlei-es' as it has also been called (this latter from M. Hiller in Tubingen)), and what might be alternatives: <ae, oe, ue> (which in a written context are historically accurate, and are also the forms recommended by the Duden) were far and away the most common forms used by the respondants with 10 using these. However, some respondants either use , or noted the use of <"a, "o, "e> or <a", o", u"> (which apparantly in some cases has to do with TeX (I'm afraid I'm not that well up on the computer jargon!)). The use of MIME characters, which apparantly allows the transfer of special characters is on the increase. <ss> is the preferred choice of 12 of the respondants (and is also the Duden method, where the ligature is not available), just two said they regularly use <sz>, although two more noted it was more widespread in Austria. B. Kellner described how, in learning the ligature as a child, it was taught as <sz>, from which the children then progressed onto <ss>, so for her <sz> is a bit like child language! Other ways noted for encoding eszett (how do you spell that anyway (I got 3 different spellings for it!) were <"s> (G. Toops) and </3> (M. Nullmeier). 3) As for other languages, there were just a few responses: D. Jauntirans said that personally in Latvian e-mail, accents could be ignored, though others use <'> for softening sign etc, M. Picard noted that in French e-mail accents are mostly dropped (I wonder what that does to the people in the Acadamie?); F. Lessing gave the example of the use of <h> in Portuguese, where the accent or lack of it is distinctive e.g. esta 'this' v. estah 'is'; B. Chapman on Esperanto said that the circumflex over <g, c> becomes an <x> or also <h>, thus <gx, cx>, <gh, ch> whilst in Welsh it tends to disappear, In Danish, </> and <|> are used for the specific letters (H. Haberland), and Irish uses </> for an acute accent. Extensive surveys of Diacritics in e-mail for Hungarian and transliteration from Slavic were sent in by P. Svigeta and G.H. Toops respectively, they are however a little too long to go into here. Should anyone like to see them, I can, if the autheors do not object, certainly forward them on. Interesting was that Hungarian also breaks down the umlaut <o> to <oe>, for example, but that other methods have been more recently developed, such as the TeX method </"o> for umlaut <o> or a computational linguist's idea for codification which numbers the accents, thus o-umlaut is <o2>. Thus it stands. According to most recent reports (e.g Die Welt 07/03/96, there is nothing now to stop a reform of German orthography as of 1998, at least as long as Austria and Switzerland are in accordance (which will be decided in the |Summer). It is a move which, as far as can be seen here neither enjoies very widespread support, nor causes the same disbelief or outrage as previous proposals have done. On the other hand, the use of a number of variants in e-mail systems suggests that it won't be too long before some kind of single system might be introduced or conventionalised, although it may, who knows, remain an area where one can vent one's disapproval at the rigidity of modern life, and rebel against the system! The following are those who kindly responded: Bill.ChapmanMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue