> Leihst du dir das Buch von deinem Lieblingsschriftsteller aus?
Oh, that word! Even in slow motion I couldn’t spell it :)
Oh, that word! Even in slow motion I couldn’t spell it :)
I hope this doesn't get auto corrected but how about Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaen (sorry no umlauts here and no fff from me :)).
For the uninitiated: Schiff has 2 f. Fahrt has an f. But there a rule that if you combine words to make a new one you can't have a letter repeat more than twice.
Papplakate? Pappe and Plakate.
Schlaemmkreide? (again no umlaut but you get it thats an a umlaut and not just an e). Coz it's from Schlamm not schlemmen.
This is a rule of the old spelling; it does not hold with respect to the new spelling rules.
Of particular importance is because of this rule change, for some words many native speakers actually became aware that they pronounced some words wrongly.
Old spelling: Stilleben [still life]
Many native speaker pronounced wrongly this word as Stil-Leben [long i; style life], but actually correct is Still-Leben [short i; still life]. The new spelling removes this potential source of confusion.
Next thing you tell me the new rules for "das" vs "dasz" (sorry no umlauts here but I guess you get what I mean) after a comma make sense. The reasoning was that the new rules will finally make it easier for people to know when to write "das" after a comma vs. "dasz" which you now write "dass". No they don't, they just make the exact same mistake! It was never about the szett. It's all about the "das" vs "dass", which given I have no umlauts here I always wrote as "dass" anyway, since you can replace an szett with a double s.
Ich dachte mir schon, dass das Auto neu ist.
Das Auto, das ich meine, ist neu.
Now I will give you the Stillleben and the Pappplakate and Schifffahrt make sense in a way. But they went all out, didn't they? Let's just allow Schiff-Fahrt and Papp-Plakate and Still-Leben as well. Donau-Dampf-Schiff-Fahrts-Gesellschafts-Kapitaen FTW! :P
The goal was to somewhat codify the idea that a single consonant (e.g. the "l" at the end of "Tal") implies that the previous vowel should be long (t-ah-l) while a double consonant (the "ll" at the end of "Ball") implies that the previous vowel should be long (b-a-l). (This was already true most of the time for other consonants, but "s/as/ß" remained an exception.)
Therefore similarly, by analogy, "Fass" has a double consonant at the end of the word, so we know that it is a short vowel (f-a-ss), and "Maß" has a single consonant at the end, so we know it must be long (m-ah-ss).
As an aside, this doesn't explain why we still need ß in the first place - if it's just there to indicate long and short vowels, why not just use a single "s" like with the other consonants? The answer is in pluralisation rules: when you pluralise "Maß -> Maße", you still say a hard "s" sound (m-ah-ss-uh). But if you pluralise, say, "Los -> Lose", the "s" becomes a "z" sound (l-oh-z-uh). In German orthography, it's generally the case that you need to know both the single and plural of a word to be able to spell it correctly.
Even under this new scheme, a lot of short, very common words retain their original spelling, which is why "das", which was an irregular, common word under the old scheme, remains an irregular, common word under the new scheme. So yes, you still need to understand the difference between "das" and "dass", in the same way you need to understand the different between "there" and "they're" in english.
I get the actual szett. That's not the point of dass vs das after the comma. That's exactly my point. It never was about the szett vs. double s for that rule. The thing that trips people up about that rule wasn't the szett. It's the "can you replace the dass/dasz with 'welche(s)' or not". And they did not make that part easier. But that's what the reform was about. Everything was supposed to make more sense and be easier. Except kids that had learned for 12 years suddenly were supposed to use arbitrary new rules in year 13 which would be their final school year exams (replace with 11/12 in states with 12 instead of 13 years).
Like you say "das" and "dass" really make the same sound. As did "dasz" (instead of making a "dahs" sound).
Side note: just like people not getting das vs dass irks me in German the there and they're really irks me in English. Is it really that hard? (tho on the interwebs we gotta discount half the misspellings nowadays to autocorrect I would presume).
Under the new rules, shouldn't we be allowed to write it as Lieblings-Schrift-Steller then? :P
I'm still laughing!
I live in Germany as a foreigner, so I'm a bit biased of course. But my observation is that the German culture and language are a bit of a reflection of each other. Formal German use long, complicated sentences with long compound words and complex grammatical sentence. This somehow translates into a love/appreciation of neat, complex processes. There's more than a bit of cultural bias towards that. Kind of funny if you are aware and see somebody going a bit OCD on that.
Eminently parsable for me. But then, I'm Danish and used to this kind of bolt-on word construction, or wordconstruction as I should far prefer it.
It roughly translates to "fresh steam fast shutting pusher". It's a part that cuts off steam to the generator turbines.
That's quite the mouthful even for native Germans, and became a meme in our small family.