# German spelling revolt: Finally some Euros stand up for themselves **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 23, 2004, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706 "2004-09-23T16:44:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706/61 "2014-09-11T09:39:59Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > Frankly speaking, when maintaining something that has existed for 300 years is so _cheap_, I don’t mind keeping it. Steam engine factories and telegraph towers would have been substantially more expensive to maintain, after all. > > Also, getting rid of things just because they are “old” and there are “better” substitutes… Sometimes it is not prudent. But this is outside of the purview of this thread. Well, the point is not about the institutions being old, is about them being useless and therefore not needing substitutes at all, but in any case I can’t imagine any downside whatsoever in substituting anything by better alternatives, which, I don’t know if prudent, but does sound logical, ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706/62 "2014-09-11T09:51:28Z")
> [@Sr\_Siete](#): > > Well, the point is not about the institutions being old, is about them being useless and therefore not needing substitutes at all, but in any case I can’t imagine any downside whatsoever in substituting anything by better alternatives, which, I don’t know if prudent, but does sound logical, I don’t consider the language academies as useless, but that is just my opinion (like yours is the opposite), so we can agree to disagree. As to the downsides in substituting things by “better” alternatives, I am thinking, for instance, of the archival problems technological progress has introduced. As an example, there are huge amounts of data that cannot be accessed anymore because they are kept in obsolete formats in tapes that are degrading with time, and risk being lost forever. At my work (I am a patent examiner at the European Patent Office) that is a serious problem. When those data were put there, of course it was “better” than keeping them on paper. Unfortunately the paper records can still be accessed 100 years later (even if the access itself is not quick and easy)… But tapes created in the 1980s cannot be accessed anymore, unless you take them to very specialized labs and transfer them to other media – and there are lots of tapes that very likely we won’t have time to transfer before they degrade beyond illegibility. It seems as if a growing repository of data will have to be constantly transferred as technology advances to avoid losing it because the disks they are in cannot be read anymore or have degraded beyond legibility. Another example of an “old” technology that in certain aspects will be better than the “new” ones is manual typewriters. The German secret services (and apparently others as well) have brought them back from retirement in order to deal with very sensitive information that would be at risk of easier eavesdropping if it were typed in computers. Anyway – this is simply to say that “new” does not always automatically equal “better”, and that there are upsides and downsides to it. Like there are to everything else, I might add. And I have completely hijacked the thread with this. Apologies! ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706/63 "2014-09-11T11:00:21Z")
> [@aegypt](#): > > I’d just like to point out the following: > > \ > > Grammar and spelling rules are enforced by Language Commisars who stalk the streets authorized to shoot culprits on the spot. But you knew that. > > And yeah, our kids are not generally called Moon Unit or Diva or Dweezil\*. But then we don’t love our children very much. Certainly not to the point of giving them a creative name that’ll give their little playmates countless hours of laughs and jokes throughout their childhood! > > \*Usually they’re called things like “Lenin”, “Osama”, “Pol Pot” or “Stalin”. Depending on whether it’s a boy or a girl. This should have come with a “liquid in the mouth” warning. Please remit a new HP laptop keyboard (American version, none of that Commie Foo stuff!) to the address that I shall email to you. Additionally, don’t judge our Merkin liberties to name our children anything we want. I’ve named my children Mailbox, Pylon, and Curtain. I can do that because FREEDOM! (Seriously, your post is _hilarious_.) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706/64 "2014-09-12T03:40:31Z")
> [@kellner](#): > > Oh, and the old spellings are just the result of the last reform in 1901. For the record, I object to that reform, too, because my German teacher taught us the old spellings so my daughter thinks I’m hopelessly unhip. An older example of name [del]Nazis[/del] Quislings: [Biker Changes Name To Harley Davidsen](http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/biker-changes-name-to-harley-davidsen/article_84bf00ca-3cb9-5076-ad86-ddde0bcb1dec.html) > [@](#): > > OSLO, Norway (AP) - Harley Davidsen loves his Harley-Davidson. > > So much, in fact, that the 28-year-old legally took the name of the famous motorcycle as his own, although he had to accept a slight spelling change… > > …The only hitch was that Norway’s strict name laws prevented him from spelling Davidson with an “son” because that is considered a Swedish name. Instead he used the Norwegian spelling, Davidsen." ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706/65 "2014-09-12T07:23:08Z")
**Sr Siete** , I’m too lazy to search for it, but recently the subject of the Ortografía came up. EFL posters were surprised by this concept of “a single manual of style for everybody”, and saw that it’s a lot easier to have a single one than to have a multitude. If you think that’s not important, I’ll assume you’ve never had to format your writings in different ways and use different spellings of the same word for different teachers or publications. Put me squarely on the side of “while they’re not, nor do they attempt to be, the source for ‘what is a word’, they certainly do have their uses.” Such as, providing a single manual of style for over half a billion people. ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706/66 "2014-09-12T10:31:12Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > **Sr Siete** , I’m too lazy to search for it, but recently the subject of the Ortografía came up. EFL posters were surprised by this concept of “a single manual of style for everybody”, and saw that it’s a lot easier to have a single one than to have a multitude. If you think that’s not important, I’ll assume you’ve never had to format your writings in different ways and use different spellings of the same word for different teachers or publications. > > Put me squarely on the side of “while they’re not, nor do they attempt to be, the source for ‘what is a word’, they certainly do have their uses.” Such as, providing a single manual of style for over half a billion people. Yes, but again, we are literally writing to each other right now using a language that has no need for that single manual. And yet the differences between say, Australian English and US English are smaller than the differences between, say, Mexican and Chilean. So English speakers can choose between spelling “disk” or “disc” and there’s not ruling body telling them which one is the acceptable one, and yet they seem to survive that terrible ordeal. So why would the idea of lacking an official ortografía in Spanish be such a drama, when it’s clearly not one in English? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-spelling-revolt-finally-some-euros-stand-up-for-themselves/265706.md?page=3)