Re: Mmmmmmmmmm .............. Punch Margarita


"Bart Goddard" <goddardbe@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns993FA101B3D6Fgoddardb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A side note on German spellings. There are lots of German
dialects, and they can be quite different. Hitler standardized
dialect and spelling (that, along with the Autobahn was part of
his program to unite "all German peoples".) Then after the
War, there was a natural tendency for people to resurrect their
old dialects, so these alternate spellings and pronounciations
haven't really died off and aren't exactly "incorrect" like
they would be in English.

I'm not sure I can agree with you on this. While it is true that unlike the
French, the Germans do not have an official institution to watch over the
language, they do have a prescriptive standard of orthography and grammar as
set down in the Duden. In addition, there is a semi-permanent conference
comprised of education ministers of the various countries where German is
spoken and various other concerned parties (German language professors,
writers, teachers etc); this body can mandate changes to the language as it
is taught in schools. It was the second such conference, in 1901, which
standardised the German language as we know it today. English, by contrast,
has no bodies, official or otherwise, with even vaguely comparable function;
the Shakespeare canon and the King James bible have had more influence than
any edition of Merriam-Webster or the OED (both of which are strictly
descriptive, besides).

Under the Nazis, there was a planned reform, but the unexpectedly premature
demise of the Thousand Year Reich put an end to it before it could be
implemented -- and a good thing, too, because the principle of the reform
was the paramount supremacy of the spoken word. How it was spoken, it
should be written -- a logical conclusion for a regime which saw radio as a
prime medium of communication with and indoctrination of the populace.


.

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