languages

From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke_at_mch20.sbs.de>
Date: Thu Mar 9 18:12:16 2000

> *snip*
> > Well, to late over here - Standard German has equalized most German
> > languages and dialects. More than 100 years of Education did succeede.

> I thought book mal (which I KNOW is spelled wrong, what little German spelling
> I knew in undergrad school I've long since forgotten) was the standard for
> education, but I didn't think there were laws requiring it. Are there?

Maybe you're confusing the name with booksmal, the
'official' norwegian spelling/language ? Anyway,
Standard German (Hochdeutsch) is defined as the
language to be used in official (state) documents.
The spepelling of this language is defined to be the
standard spelling to be uese in any official corospodence
(Not for the citicen, but to be used by the officer).
All school education is using this language in all
classes. TV and Radio programs are made in Standard
German ... so society is converting - Well, the reasons
are maybe logical and understandable, just I dislike
them at all. As some of you may know, Germany had
several mor or less succesfull confrontations with
France, just, do you know what language the German
Officers had to use for conferences and to clear
orders ? German ? Wrong, even in the successfull
1870/71 war the language of the German commanders
was french - otherwise a Leutnant from lets say
Bavaria and one from Hanover would had a hard time
to understand each other. Althrough all part of the
German language family, close members, the difference
is way deeper than lets say between American, Australien
or English English. Maybe a bit like the Ebony thing.
Or to use known languages, in the worst case (Bavarian
vs. Platt) like between todays English and Dutch.

Anyway, going back to your question: it's a soft
force of standardisation rather a brute force today -
it has been different in the past.

Gruss
H.

BTW: Just curious - almost nobody is going on my remarks about C :)

--
VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
Received on Thu Mar 09 2000 - 18:12:16 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:33:05 BST