« Life and Logic | Main | Diversosphere »

March 31, 2005

Deutsche Mavens

I suppose this should not come as a surprise, but it isn't just English that has language mavens. Bastian Sick (sic) writes a column called "Zwiebelfisch" in Der Spiegel, in which he chastises Germans for their non-standard grammar, and gives advice about pronunciation. I didn't know what "Zwiebelfisch" meant, but it has an entry in the German Wikipedia, from which I learned that it is a printing and publishing term for a single letter that is erroneously set in a different font. Like this, I guess.

Here Sick berates native speakers for forming the perfect of "anfangen" (to begin) with the auxiliary verb "sein", e.g.

Sick says that the only correct way is to use the auxiliary "haben":

Duden agrees with him on the formation of the perfect of "anfangen" of course, as did all my old German teachers. Sein + angefangen can actually make sense as a Zustandspassiv (statal passive) construction, but construed that way it does not mean what the speakers intend (namely that, say, she has begun (something), but rather that she is (in the state of having been) begun.) So there is no haven for those Duden-bucking non-conformists there.

In other posts Sick discusses the perfect of "stehen" (to stand), and answers questions about the correct way to pronounce "Mecklenburg," and whether one knocks "an der Tür" (on the-DAT door) or "an die Tür" (on the-ACC door.) He also takes on the idea that Rechtschreibung (correct spelling/grammar) plays no role in email, and opines that "Smileys ersetzen keine Interpunktion." (Smileys don't replace punctuation.)

This reminded me of Lynn Truss in Eats, Shoots and Leaves: the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation:

Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about Smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for ornamental functions. What's this dot-on-top-of-a-dot thing for? What earthly good is it? Well, if you look at it sideways, it could be a pair of eyes. What's this curvy thing for? It's a mouth, look! Hey, I think we're on to something. (193)

The German case is interesting in that, when they talk about "Rechtschreibung" they are talking about a set of rules that were amended the the 1990s in what is referred to as die Rechtschreibungsreform and there is a recognised document which lays down these new standards for German written text. The reforms were introduced to German schools in 1996 - while I was teaching in a German High School near Kiel, (yes, I too was an English Language Teacher. It's sort of like the foreign legion for British university students.) Overnight the brilliant and lunatic "Schifffahren" (travel by boat) (formed by joining "Schiff" (boat) and "fahren" (travel)) was replaced with the more mundane "Schiffahren." The German media adopted the new rules en masse in 1999, but the leading broadsheet Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung only stuck it for a year before going back to the old ways.


The end of this post seems like a good excuse to sneak in a link to Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language." I actually used this text when teaching English to a group of talented 18 year-olds in a German highschool. Bad experience.

What is this passage about?
The man is being very rude about our language. I think it is stupid.
That's interesting. What do the rest of you think? Is Mark Twain trying to insult German?
(silence)
I agree with Inga. He is stupid. He writes stupid things.
So, er...no-one thinks it meant to be humourous then?
No, because it is not funny.

45 minutes to go.

And there is no recovering from accidentally offending your audience...

Posted by logican at March 31, 2005 01:51 AM

Trackback Pings

The trackback address for this entry is:
http://www.logicandlanguage.net/trakbak.cgi/14