A spelling war with no clear winners.

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Knut Pries

Let’s just accept it: German spelling is complicated, said Knut Pries in the Frankfurter Rundschau. A much-ballyhooed reform effort of the past decade, in which an international team of experts pushed new spelling rules, has failed. Last week, Germany’s culture minister signed the final raft of “reforms to the reforms”—the last of many changes that bring back some of the old, familiar spellings. In 1996, for example, Eislaufen, the noun for ice skating, was separated into two words, “Eis laufen,” but now reverts to one. There have been so many nit-picking changes—and so many arguments over them—that the supporters of reform have become just as frustrated as the opponents. Newspapers and novelists flat-out refused to follow the new rules. Those who tried—mostly students, teachers, and publishers—kept being thrown by new modifications and counter-modifications. The rest of us watched the whole drama agape, “alternating between rage and apathy.” I’m sure the bureaucrats meant well. They simply wanted to help Germans master their mother tongue by simplifying the rules. But that is “misguided micromanagement,” worthy of a totalitarian state. The whole effort has had but one tangible result: “The word ‘reform’ has been so abused that it will retain a bad taste for years to come.” At least it’s still spelled the same.