Continuing the discussion from Pronunciation of non-English words in old movies:
Vering away from the discussion on non-English words in old movies: Yes, I believe German would benefit from an official institution with state backing for the setting of the rules concerning the German language. Like the Académie Française or the Real Academia de la Lengua Española indeed. This institution should not be profit oriented, should receive state funding, work scientifically and should be democratic. Because a private enterprise like the Duden Verlag pretends to set the rules, but their job should not be normative, just descriptive. Still they change the rules on orthography and expect them to be applied in official texts, state exams, university papers… you name it. Even quiz shows where huge amounts of money are at stake use them as criterion for right or wrong. I dispute their right to do so. I know it is futile, but it is my opinion.
That can lead to something even more arrogant: the Verein für Deutsche Sprache (VDS), who, despite being only a reactionary private club with no legitimation whatsoever, declares every year what they arbitrarily choose to be the word of the year, the young people’s word of the year (despite their members being on average 104 years old), the un-word of the year (yes, they claim they can spot un-words) and then get coverage on national TV and in the press like they had the authority do so. Absurd. It is simply a scam.
Claiming to have an authority you have not is what I call appropriation. Some privately published English dictionaries back me up on that definition.
And now for the curious linguistic factoid of the day: in German the words Unikum, Universum, Gott and Unikat can form a plural. Gottseibeiuns can’t.
Is it Duden Verlag or the Verein für Deutsche Sprache which decrees that Gottseibeiuns can’t be pluralized? 
Why, exactly?
It’s obviously possible that standards of literacy may vary over time, but in general standards of education have improved rather than declined. As for the spoken language - there’s no evidence supporting the persistent fallacy that language is somehow in decline, or that any language is has ever required any prescriptive authority (whether self-appointed or a formal institution) in order to flourish.
All the real rules of any language arise by a combination of instinct and spontaneous consensus-forming in the community of speakers. These true rules are never disputed and so universally and unconsciously followed that they are rarely even articulated, except when the rules vary among dialects. There is certainly more to style and elegance in language than the generative rules that govern the formation of grammatically valid sentences, but the minor aspects of usage that prescriptivists agonize over are almost invariably superficial details. Prescriptive committees don’t foster style and elegance.
Language variation has be used to reinforce rigid social hierarchy, and as an expression of base tribalism and supremacism, to cite a recent example:
Language Log » Rachel Jeantel’s language in the Zimmerman trial
An ethically mature society embraces diversity, and it seems to me that we should apply this principle no less to language. We should celebrate the diversity of language rather than seeking to legitimize misguided prescriptivist norms with official institutions. Human language is a remarkable phenomenon: we can celebrate its diversity and appreciate its beauty with complete confidence that the rules will look after themselves, as they have done spontaneously throughout history.
I don’t believe we disagree: when I wrote that the Duden Verlag should be descriptive and not prescriptive I was not implying that a state academy should proceed in any other way. But with democratic state control, and not profit oriented, like a private publisher must be. Thus, with state funding. And where there is funding there should be oversight.
ETA: I wanted to argue that a state academy, properly run, would be much better than the Duden Verlag. They are prescriptive and I dispute their authority to be. But they get away with it in real life.
I got that, but if I think flat-Earthism is wrong, my reaction is to debunk and ridicule flat-Earthism, not to set up a state academy of flat-Earthism! The idea of language academies is closely tied to misguided notions of linguistic purity, and it’s not clear to me what you think such an academy will do other than to prescribe norms. You cite the model of the Académie Française which was set up explicitly to purge the language of impurity.
I don’t speak German so I’m not familiar with your dictionaries - publishing a good descriptivist dictionary would be a worthwhile endeavor, if none exists.
German is a pluricentric language that was only recently standardized. For pedagogical purposes it’s good to answer the question “what is German and how do we teach it?” It’s good for second-language learners, it’s good for people who (until recently) lived in such remote dialects that Standard German was nearly a foreign language.
I will never understand why, when someone starts a thread about language rules, there’s always someone(s) ready to swoop in and give the same tired lecture about “prescriptivism is always bad”. It’'s so predictable and tired. /rant
Because the point that most prescriptivism is misconceived and can be socially divisive clearly hasn’t got through to the great majority of people. Of any topic, the most reliable way to get thousands of responses to a thread is to ask people what annoys them about language usage. Parochial peeving about variations from the dialect of your own time and place is a national pastime - at best an ignorant waste of energy, at worst base tribalism and supremacism.
List of language regulators - Wikipedia
Language academies are motivated by, or closely associated with, linguistic purism and prestige, and typically publish prescriptive dictionaries,[1] which purport to officiate and prescribe the meaning of words and pronunciations.
It’s certainly possible for a language academy to be scientific, and to serve some worthwhile purpose as you describe. But it’s hardly unreasonable to suspect otherwise, and to question exactly what it entails.
So what? Who made you the prescriber of suitable thread responses? You’re so committed to this threadshit of policing wrongthink in a language you don’t even know, that you overlooked the OP was criticizing a prescriptivist institution and encouraging a more descriptivist approach.
Nobody’s doing that here, so what are you doing?
OP advocates a state language academy. He advocates descriptivism, but his model is the ultra-prescriptivist Académie Française, which contradicts that. So let’s get back to the topic, shall we? My question was - what does OP envision the language academy will do?
Do you know any other, never mind a better source than the Duden Verlag? No? That is the problem I am trying to point at.
It would not be the first time things are done differently on both sides of the Rhine. I would like to believe that respecting Germany’s federal structure and including Swizzerland and Austria in this academy would go some way to take your worries into account.
Describe, for Godott’s sake! Reflect the reality, explain its historic roots, document regionalisms, elucidate dubious ethymologies, shame the French and the Spaniards by making it better than them and behead those who infinitives split. And create a couple of comfortably padded chairs with good salaries. Open to public scrutiny and critique, something a private publisher is not and cannot be (because of trade secrets, and lawyers, and lost the keys, and it was so long ago… you know?).
Some random thoughts after eight hours of sleep:
You may have noticed in the other thread that when I recommended establishing a German equivalent to the Académie Française I did so with a wink.
Such institutions make some contribution to uniformity and thus ease of communication, but they’re far from all-powerful. They might be able to dictate the standards of official documents, but they have little effect beyond that. People will still speak the way they want.
I remember how the AF once tried to ban the use of “radar” in favor of a French phrase that translated as “radio-based ranging” (which is what “radar” actually means). Fifty or sixty years later, the people who operate such sets still use the term “radar,” SFAIK. (As does everybody else.)
I currently work in publishing, which does require some standardization. However, the rules you follow are usually set by whatever style guide your employer uses, and these vary considerably.
Outside of journalism, I find the best way to judge the skill of a writer is how well he or she deviates from commonly accepted standards in establishing a personal style. (Read Look Homeward, Angel and you’ll see what I mean.)
A great deal also depends on the register in which you write. To be able to vary your style to suit your intended audience without becoming a parody of yourself is another sign of a good writer (especially when it comes to translations).
Oh, yes, I did, but it did not carry over here well. Riemann did not see your wink in the other thread, it seems, and has given the debate a much more serious spin than I intended. I was also continuing a side argument with EinsteinsHund about the Duden and its authority, look how that has ended! (And EinsteinHund is not even here yet!) Ah, well… for fear of a hijack I went into a quagmire.
Speaking in favor of standardization, I can tell you from personal experience that it’s essential when teaching English as a foreign language. You can explain the use of “ain’t” to students once they reach a certain level, but not before. Such information overload simply confuses them.
And I remember how the Spanish Real Academia tried to impose that the word whisky be spelled güisqui in Spanish. Because “W” is not really a Spanish letter. You can imagine how that ended: today whisky is a recognized anglizism. It may be used. It is defined as güisqui. And güisqui is defined as:
- m. Licor alcohólico que se obtiene del grano de algunas plantas, destilando un compuesto amiláceo en estado de fermentación.
Did I hear you bang your head against the table? Wait for güisquería, the place where güisqui and other alcoholic beverages are served. ¡Salud!
Would you recommend the edited version or the “restored” version?
It could be argued though that English would benefit from some steering.
I’m not saying one agency that just lays down the law.
But just some agenc(-ies) that suggest things like spelling simplification, and have enough sway that some of their suggestions catch on, because English idiosyncratic spelling does seem to be a hindrance to learning English, for no gain whatsoever.
It’s not gonna happen, but it would be good if it did.
I’m pretty sure read it in the original version. I imagine a lot of the author’s personal style would be lost in editing.
I once had a Russian girlfriend who read Les Misérables when she was a child. I wish now I had asked her which language it was in, and if it was abridged. I read it as an adult, but in an abridged English translation. I gather a lot of the story was lost in the retelling.
Clarity is the most important thing in writing, regardless of your register. Faulkner, who uses Southern dialect a lot, is just as clear in his prose as Hemingway and Steinbeck are in theirs.
I occasionally help my ex-wife, who is also an EFL teacher (but not a native English speaker), write instructional materials. I sometimes laugh out loud when I read her test questions, since it’s often not clear who does what to whom, or where they do it.
Such attempts have been made. Probably the one most notable was by Benjamin Franklin:
Being based in Pennsylvania, Franklin also proposed making German the official language of the United States, but that’s another story.
(As an aside, I find it amusing that the British pronounce “Don Quixote” as “Don KWIKS-oat,” as is sanctioned by the BBC.)
Well, I’d say the more notable one was Webster’s because it indeed caught on (in the US).
It doesn’t seem feasible to happen again though, even within one country. Since English is now a worldwide lingua franca, if, say, Australia were to reform their spelling everyone there would still need to learn both forms.
As it is, I think British spelling is slowly dying, which is overall a good thing (though it’s aluminium from now until forever 
)
Darn! Another good language blog! How am I to read them all? And still going strong with several recent posts (loving the one about the skipped variant name for the latest Covid mutation 
Xi-riously!) after so many years.