A few years ago the Germans undertook a comprehensive review of their written language, and decided upon several changes in order to make it more consistent and less complicated; they did things like making spelling more phonetic, replacing the German sharp-s (ß) in many words with a double-s (weiß -> weiss), and a bunch of other stuff I'm not really up to speed with. They added an extra 'p' onto 'stop', I know that.
As I ponder these changes, I wonder whether the event will even be recognised by future generations. When a high-school student 20 years from now picks up a piece of 'old' German literature (say, from the 1980's), will they scoff at the - to them - antiquated spelling of words? "'Stop' with one 'p'?! What dope would write like that?" Will it be pointed out to them that, in fact, 'Stop' was always spelled with one 'p', and it took a concerted Goverment effort to change this?
To what extent are you aware of revisions that have taken place in your language/s? The Americans de-frenchified their version of English some time ago (and I'm not talking about Freedom Fries), and languages are in a constant flux anyway as new terms and expressions come to the fore, but I'm ignorant of any broad scale revisions to the way we spell. Did 'Ye Olde English' smoothly morph into its present form because it gradually became acceptable for people to drop the 'e' from 'Olde', or was it a directive from up high? Will future generations scratch their heads over "bough", "tough" and "though", wondering how on earth we knew how to pronounce the bloody things?
When languages change like this, it's interesting to note the way they differ in their evolutions - even if they stem from the same source. The Germans put a second 'p' on 'stop', for example, because it's a hard ending. Similarly, years ago they added a 't' to the end of 'Schmid', turning it into 'Schmidt'. "So what?", you may think, but 'Schmid' is in turn a shortening of 'Schmied' - meaning Blacksmith. It's a short jump from there to the English 'Smith', but try telling a chap called 'Smith' his name was orginally German and see how far that gets you. I could probably explain why the russian 'Ivan' is the same as the Anglican 'John', but the beautiful weather outside has more attraction than further linguistic pondering.
As I ponder these changes, I wonder whether the event will even be recognised by future generations. When a high-school student 20 years from now picks up a piece of 'old' German literature (say, from the 1980's), will they scoff at the - to them - antiquated spelling of words? "'Stop' with one 'p'?! What dope would write like that?" Will it be pointed out to them that, in fact, 'Stop' was always spelled with one 'p', and it took a concerted Goverment effort to change this?
To what extent are you aware of revisions that have taken place in your language/s? The Americans de-frenchified their version of English some time ago (and I'm not talking about Freedom Fries), and languages are in a constant flux anyway as new terms and expressions come to the fore, but I'm ignorant of any broad scale revisions to the way we spell. Did 'Ye Olde English' smoothly morph into its present form because it gradually became acceptable for people to drop the 'e' from 'Olde', or was it a directive from up high? Will future generations scratch their heads over "bough", "tough" and "though", wondering how on earth we knew how to pronounce the bloody things?
When languages change like this, it's interesting to note the way they differ in their evolutions - even if they stem from the same source. The Germans put a second 'p' on 'stop', for example, because it's a hard ending. Similarly, years ago they added a 't' to the end of 'Schmid', turning it into 'Schmidt'. "So what?", you may think, but 'Schmid' is in turn a shortening of 'Schmied' - meaning Blacksmith. It's a short jump from there to the English 'Smith', but try telling a chap called 'Smith' his name was orginally German and see how far that gets you. I could probably explain why the russian 'Ivan' is the same as the Anglican 'John', but the beautiful weather outside has more attraction than further linguistic pondering.
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