German spelling reform
From UniLang Wiki
Nowadays two different spelling systems are used in the German-speaking countries. One is the first unified spelling of 1902, which was present in all Duden dictionaries until the 1990s. The other one is the first official reform of German spelling after 1902. After years of debating, progressive and conservative linguists reached a compromise in 1996. The rules of the reform have been valid in schools and public authorities since August 1998. Until 2005, both variants are officially valid. There was a wave of protests against this reform in the 1990s, which made the Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ), a major national newspaper in Germany, move back to the old spelling, and the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein do the same in its schools.
The spelling reform only affects a small part of the German vocabulary. The main changes are:
- German spelling reform: capitalization: Simplification of the rules governing capitalization
- German spelling reform: comma: Simplified comma rules
- German spelling reform: compounds: Simplification of the rules governing the way compound words are written (together, with a hyphen or as two words)
- German spelling reform: ß: Reduction of ß in favor of ss (Switzerland and Liechtenstein always use ss instead of ß)
- German spelling reform: foreign words: Simplification of some words of foreign origin
- German spelling reform: hyphenation: Introduction of a consistently phonemic syllable division
- German spelling reform: irregulars: Simplification of some irregularly spelled words
- German spelling reform: triples: Permission of triple letters in compound words
The offical web site informing about the spelling reform is http://www.ids-mannheim.de/reform/
languages >> German >> German issues
