Dear all,
In response to the questions raised by Sheila Watts and by Martin Durrell, I
copy sections of my reply to Martin for the whole list.
Best wishes,
Christian

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1. Consistency: Apparently, the schools in Germany are trying to enforce
consistency, and don't accept a complete mixture of both new and old
spelling. As schools have started to introduce the new spelling by cohorts
or years (starting with first grades in primary schools), they won't have to
face the problems of students having been taught both sets of rules in much
the same way as we do. This, I understand, is one of the reasons for the
'Uebergangsperiode'.

2. As far as I know, the official policy at schools with regard to the 'old'
spelling is that during the 'Uebergangsperiode', it is not marked as wrong
but as "ueberholt". So this seems to be a middle ground of 'consistency'.

3. After giving it a second thought, I believe there is indeed a case for at
least a certain degree of consistency, based on the following arguments:

a. If we accept both ways of spelling without even marking 'old spelling' as
'old' (and soon outdated!), we are teaching a spelling system that won't be
accepted after 2005; that would be rather short-sighted. If we assume that
our students will (hopefully) continue to use the German language in its
written form beyond 2005, we should prepare them to do so correctly, much as
we might dislike the new spelling rules (as I for one do).

b. I personally would find it strange to accept, say, double-'ss' and
"Esszet"-spellings of one and the same word or even in different words (say
'dass' and 'muss') in the same text without at least indicating that this
usage is inconsistent. Without any indication of inconsistencies with regard
to individual *rules* students will find it hard to see there is any rule at
all. So all the rules that are affected or introduced by the spelling reform
should be used consistently; individual words (such as 'Tol(l)patsch') are
not such a problem, but should in any case be written in the same way
throughout one piece of text.

c. A further problem is punctuation. As the new spelling allows for much
more variation, it will be hard to distinguish between 'old' and 'new'
rules. We will have to accept everything that is in line with the reform.

Fazit: I would be inclined to mark the old spellings as '(soon) outdated'
and to not count them as mistakes until 2005.

 
Dr. Christian Fandrych
Department of German
King's College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS, UK
Tel. (+44) 171 - 873 2127
Fax (+44) 171 - 873 2089



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