Goodbye yogurt, hello yogurt
The German Language Council has once again published new rules. So, Jogurt will be Joghurt again and Tunfisch will be Thunfisch once more. However, not everything is changing, as the language guardians have explicitly held onto the old ways in one regard.
While German students are going on vacation, new spelling rules have taken effect. New rules do not entirely capture the core changes, but rather some writing styles that were previously acceptable have been eliminated.
Back in 2006, Kerstin Güthert, the then business manager of the German Language Council, referred to these "temporary guests." Jogurt and Tunfisch were considered correct spellings for a while, but that is now over. According to the announcement from the German Language Council, "in current usage, 'ingermanized' variants of foreign words" have been struck out.
This change applies not only to Jogurt, which is now the correct spelling for Joghurt, and Tunfisch, which will once again be Thunfisch, but also to Buklee, Dränage, Exposee, Frigidär, Katode, Kurtage, Panter, photogen, Polonäse, and Spagetti. Mayonäse had already become Mayonnaise in 2017.
How is it really written?
According to the German Language Council, these changes are adaptations based on the ongoing observation of writing development. The basis is a digital text collection at the Leibniz Institute for German Language with over 14 billion word entries.
For example, numerous new spelling-relevant foreign words have been predominantly adopted from English and other modern foreign languages. These include verbs like timen, mailen, or liken, as well as Cappuccino.
The language guardians also considered new writing styles that were not previously covered by the official regulations. An example of this is the English verb "to fake," which can now be found in the Duden under the term Fake News or Fakenews.
English, Denglisch, German
For English verbs, there are two possible endings when conjugating: "geliked" and "gelikt." In principle, verbs from English are handled like German verbs during conjugation. Examples include "surfen - surfte - gesurft" or "jobben - jobbte - gejobbt." However, there were doubts regarding verbs that end in -e in their English base form, such as "to like" or "to fake."
When these words have one or more letters added in German, the -ed variant is dropped. One can be "relaxed," but it is always "relaxter." Something can be "gefaked," but there is only the usage of "gefaktes" photo. It is expected that the variant "gefakt" will eventually prevail. German news agencies have already decided to exclusively use this variant.
At the spelling, everyone can be happy who already - or still - put a comma with extended infinitives. Infinitive groups ("extended infinitive with to") are again "separated punctually by a comma". In the chapter Spelling, this topic that is often emotionally discussed is also presented under the heading "Special Characters within Words". According to language experts, the colon, underscore, and asterisk "do not belong to the core inventory of German orthography". The problems resulting from the use of these special characters, which are intended to denote all gender identities in the sense of gender-neutral writing, are not yet fully assessable, and the development of the entire field must be observed further.
Regular revisions or revisions like these, which came into force from the beginning of July, are regularly made. They aim to reflect changes in language use. The German Spelling Council mainly focuses on typical orthographic doubt cases.
In the realm of linguistics, these spelling changes are influenced by international trends, as many new foreign words in German have originated from English and other modern languages. The German Language Council, in coordination with international norms, is constantly adapting to these developments.
Moreover, the decisions made by the German Language Council are not exclusive to German, as they also impact languages like English and Denglisch, demonstrating the interconnectedness of global linguistics.
