See Spelling revolt grips German press.

BBC Monitoring writes, of Springer and Spiegel:

The two companies are not the first publishers to abandon the 1996 spelling rules, which included changing the spelling of many compound words and cutting the distinctive "sz" sound represented by a beta character.

Where. Do. I. Start? The new spelling retains ß after a long vowel. It replaces ß with ss after a short vowel. This makes pronouncing German much easier if you're not a native speaker. This makes words with ss conform to the rules of every other double consonant in the language. And ß is certainly not a beta character. β is a beta character. In a seriffed font, ß has serifs, while beta doesn't. There's a descender on beta and not on ß. They are   d i f f e r e n t   l e t t e r s .

posted at: 20:47 | path: /D | permanent link to this entry

Is greedy parsing always the correct strategy when reading Finnish words?

The question first occurred to me in June 2002 on the Suomenlinna ferry: First, is there any point in, when presented with an unfamiliar and very long word, looking up elements that aren't the first first? Second, is the largest chunk at the beginning of a word that could form a word, assuming that the rest of the word can form a word or unit of sense, always a word?

Take tulipaloale, to pick a word at random from my Gummerus. Ignoring the biggest word that is the word itself, the next break is tulipaloa|le, but le, unlike la (as in Tapiola, Pohjola, Kalevala) doesn't make sense on its own. The next break, working back, is tulipalo|ale, which, ale meaning "sale" and being short for alennusmyyntiö, makes a word. The rest of the word breaks into tulipa|lo, again, not allowed, or tuli|palo, which means fire-fire. So, a fire-fire sale.

Pont Lurcock points out that there is a problem with the letter n, which is the genitive marker. Both aula (entrance hall) and naula (nail) (Pont's example) are words, as are ero (difference) and nero (genius). I'm used to ambiguity in English, but Finnish seems such a well-constructed language that the ambiguities are something of a surprise. I've never heard of anyone being brought a plate of liver in a restaurant (Haluaisin maksaa) when they wanted to pay, though.

posted at: 20:47 | path: /baltism/greedy | permanent link to this entry

[image: fearful old man in heavy spectacles looking out from behind curtains]

A THINGOE PENSIONER today celebrates his eighteenth birthday. But how? He was, of course, born on the 29th of February, in 192. This would make him 80 today, you might imagine, but he explains:

"It's all the Germans' fault." he explains. During the Second World War, Churchill removed the leap days from the calendar to help with the war effort. This leaves me two years' short, because I missed birthdays in 1940 and 1944. I spent the entire war only three years old, so I didn't have to to to school!

posted at: 19:15 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry