Yes, the German language has had several big changes, but until the reform we‘re talking about it was linguistically „proper“ in that the existing language was described and codified. It was bottom up.
In this reform some non-elected people (who just a few years earlier had said themselves that there job wasn‘t to invent German, but to describe existing use and trends) invented a whole new orthography from scratch. The new rules have never been in use anywhere throughout the German-speaking lands.
They were and are pure fiction.
In linguistics that‘s how you tell a layperson: they think linguistics is proscriptive. Now it seems to be... :-(
And of course people under 22 don‘t care. They have never learned proper German.
You mean, just like in many other languages? According to Wikipedia, French, Icelanding, Spanish, Swedish, and a few more have had varying degrees of prescriptive language standardization.
> Yes, the German language has had several big changes, but until the reform we‘re talking about it was linguistically „proper“ in that the existing language was described and codified. It was bottom up.
I just explained why that wasn’t the case. Many linguists in the past have intentionally invented words (see the ones I mentioned) to make the language simpler, and stricter.
And the same continued until today – the drug store chain Rossmann has been a constant supporter of linguistic prescriptivism, has sponsored groups supporting it, and has been using these concepts in all their published material as well. Many other companies engaged in this as well.
The language has never been defined by the people speaking it, but always by the journalists writing it, the linguists describing it, and the companies influencing it.
And German as a whole was created, as pure fiction, by people trying to publish books across the whole of Germany at a time when everyone spoke local dialects.
At no time has German ever been a bottom-up language – and if we already let our language be influenced and shaped by companies, by media – why not at least use similar influence to make it simpler?
Having a language be simple to use is more important than some fake emotional value of being "natural".
You simply don't understand what I have written. I think we can leave it here.
I don't care about your opinion that it's "fake" and "emotional".
Language is a core part of my being, and a fascist power-grab killing my mother tongue is simply a crime against humanity. It's no different from how the Turks have been treating the Kurdish language.
I have only weak hope, but still hope, that we can someday reverse this. Violently or non-violently.
Yes, the German language has had several big changes, but until the reform we‘re talking about it was linguistically „proper“ in that the existing language was described and codified. It was bottom up.
In this reform some non-elected people (who just a few years earlier had said themselves that there job wasn‘t to invent German, but to describe existing use and trends) invented a whole new orthography from scratch. The new rules have never been in use anywhere throughout the German-speaking lands.
They were and are pure fiction.
In linguistics that‘s how you tell a layperson: they think linguistics is proscriptive. Now it seems to be... :-(
And of course people under 22 don‘t care. They have never learned proper German.