The German Language Today

A Linguistic Introduction

Charles Russ

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134848010
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This clear and accessible text provides a complete introduction to basic linguistic terms and descriptions of language structures. The German Language Today describes in detail the main liguistic features of the language and the wide variety of speech forms and vocabulary existing within the German-speaking community. It also introduces sociolinguistic and linguistic topics as they relate to the German language, and illustrates them widely with examples. The German Language Today describes the sounds, inflectional processes, syntactic structures, competing forms and different layers of words in the language. Topics covered include: The distribution of German and its dialects The linguistic consequences of German reunification The application of modern linguistic concepts to German, incorporating the findings of the latest German linguistic research. The book has been written with the specific needs of students in mind. It will be invaluable to students of modern German linguistics or modern German society and will be a useful reference resource for postgraduates and teachers of German.

1 Introduction

1.1
WHAT IS GERMAN?

(Ammon 1991:19–31; Barbour and Stevenson 1990:1–14)

This fundamental question is capable of both a simple and a complicated answer. On the simple level it can be answered by a statement such as ‘the language used in Germany’. From one point of view this is undeniably true, but it is really only part of the answer. Since, however, German is used not only in Germany but also in Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg and other countries within Europe and beyond (see 1.3), German cannot be limited to the language of one country. We might, therefore, modify our statement and say that German is the sole language used in Germany and Austria. This, while again true, excludes the important fact that it is also used in other countries, albeit with a different status. In Germany and Austria it is the sole national language, whereas in Switzerland it is used alongside French, Italian and Romansh and in Luxemburg it competes with French and Luxemburgish. Thus although there is a core area where German is used, the edges of this area are rather fuzzy.

Yet in thinking we cannot state exactly where German is used we have begged the question as to what German is and have assumed that we know what its nature is. On the one hand, written German has a standard orthography, grammar and vocabulary; on the other hand, it varies along a number of parameters (see Chapter 2). Regional differences, for instance, which have become firmed up within different national boundaries are very influential. We attempt to show this nationally determined nature of German in Chapters 3 and 4 for Austria and Switzerland. Chapter 5 discusses the case which might have developed fully if there had not been the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. The main descriptions of standard German (see 1.2) form the basis for Chapters 6– 10.

German is also used as a spoken medium, and here standards and norms become more diffuse and difficult to pin down, although there is a recommended model of pronunciation (see 6.2). In many speech communities, what is regarded by the speakers themselves as spoken German is really a regional variety which differs considerably from written German. At its most extreme this can be illustrated by Low German (LG), Swiss German and Luxemburgish. Here the question raises itself as to whether these varieties can still be counted as German or are really separate languages. The answer to this question is not at all clear. Luxemburgish is usually regarded as a separate language, while Low German is still considered to be a dialect of German. Luxemburgish is the mother tongue of the majority of Luxemburgers, whereas Low German is the mother tongue of only part of the speakers in North Germany. Swiss German dialects, which are universally used in German Switzerland at the spoken level, would probably not be regarded by their speakers as separate languages. In all these situations, however, written German is used as an overarching variety spanning these spoken varieties. In Luxemburg this function is shared with French. However, this overarching variety is lacking, for example, in Alsace-Lorraine, Danish North Slesvig and the United States, where varieties which seem similar or related to German are used. In this book we shall include spoken regional varieties of German within our definition of German, although we obviously cannot describe them in detail (for detailed descriptions see Russ 1990). Here again we have a clear centre with a fuzziness around the edges.

If it is not clear where the borders of German lie or where the standard shades into related regional varieties, it is also not clear how far German extends back into the past. Users of written German do not have much difficulty in reading literary works produced in the past. Nineteenth-century authors such as Fontane, Grillparzer, Keller, Meyer and Storm are taught in schools and read by ordinary members of the speech community. Even eighteenth-century authors such as Goethe, Lessing, Schiller and Wieland can be understood without much difficulty, although their language differs in some respects from that of the present day. However, most prose works from the seventeenth century, for example Grimmelhausen’s Simplicissimus (1669), are published in modernized editions for the general public. On the other hand, many seventeenth-century hymns are still sung with the original grammar and vocabulary, although the spelling has been modernized (see pp.f.). The period from the second half of the seventeenth century to the first quarter of the eighteenth seems to be a crucial time for the development of the modern standard. Again the boundary is fuzzy, being gradual rather than abrupt. The present-day German language is thus the result of various historical factors in its development. We cannot fully understand it unless we examine its geographical extent and its historical development. A brief historical survey of the development of German is given in 1.4.

Since our concern in this book is with the German language today we might rephrase our initial question as ‘What is present-day German?’ and answer it in the following ways:

1. Present-day German is the continuation, albeit with changes, of a language which has been used since the fourth and fifth centuries AD in a wide area, whose central portion lies between the Rhine in the west and the Oder in the east, the Alps in the south and the area north of the river Schlei in the north. This core area has expanded and contracted over the centuries. Its greatest extent was in the nineteenth century, when German was used in large parts of eastern Europe, millions of German speakers had arrived in the United States and Germany possessed colonies in Africa. Nowadays most speakers in eastern Europe have fled or their language has been assimilated to other languages, the German of the immigrants to North America has largely been assimilated to English and the colonies in Africa have been lost.
2. Present-day German comprises a written and a spoken variety. The former has developed over the centuries to a standardized form which, despite some variation, is understood in all the countries where it has official or semiofficial status. It is also the basis for teaching German as a foreign language. The spoken variety of German is a continuum ranging from varieties which are very close to the standard to varieties which, linguistically, are sufficiently far removed from the standard that in some circumstances they can be regarded as separate languages.
3. Present-day German is also a language which is not standing still. It has considerable time-depth, having developed over the centuries, and it is still evolving. The present-day written language emerged only in the period from the second half of the seventeenth century to the first quarter of the eighteenth century. We have tried to illustrate this development in 2.4 and changes in progress in the relevant sections in Chapters 6–10.

To sum up: present-day German is a language which exists in written and spoken form, its main area of use being central Europe. The spoken form comprises a range of varieties from those near the written language to those quite far removed from it, differentiated regionally. The written form is comparatively stable and its users can understand texts from as far back in time as the eighteenth century.

1.2
WHAT ‘NORMS’ EXIST FOR GERMAN?

The codification, that is the recording of which forms and constructions in German are acceptable, is represented by the Duden volumes and other available grammars and dictionaries. By custom and long-standing usage the ‘rules’ of grammar and style set out in these works have become perceived as a norm which should be followed in teaching in school and when using the written language in general. In the countries where German is used there is no linguistic academy as exists in France to enforce such linguistic norms, nor is there any freedom for publishers to develop a house style as in Britain. Instead, a commercial firm, with the trade name, Duden, has been charged with overseeing and propagating the orthographic norm for German which was officially agreed in 1901. The name Duden goes back to Konrad Duden (1829–1911), whose Vollständiges Orthographisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache was first published in 1880. Duden has grasped this opportunity very successfully and produced a number of works, not only describing German but also advising and prescribing linguistic usage. All this has been further complicated by the existence of two German states from 1949 to 1990 with a parallel institution, both using the name Duden, one in the west in Mannheim and the other in the east in Leipzig, which have shown divergent forms to some extent (see 5.2.1). In August 1991 the Duden Rechtschreibung, the twentieth edition, was published, the first Duden for a united Germany since the thirteenth edition of 1947. In 1950 the spelling in Duden was recognized as being authoritative in cases of uncertainty by the Kulturministerkonferenz (‘Conference of Education Ministers’) of West Germany: ‘In Zweifelsfällen wird bis auf weiteres die Schreibweise des “Duden” als richtunggebend angegeben’ (‘In cases of doubt the orthography of “Duden” will be taken as authoritative’). This decision was confirmed in 1955. The Duden gradually expanded its range of language reference works so that it amounted to four volumes by 1959 and by the 1960s it had increased to nine, reaching the round figure of ten in 1972. An eleventh volume, Redewendungen und sprichwörtliche Redensarten, was published in 1992. By implication the authority of Duden as representing the orthographic norm for German has been extended, by unofficial implication, to other areas of language such as grammar and word formation, although Duden is at pains to deny this. The working and structure of the committee responsible for the language reference works (the Dudenredaktion) are treated by Drosdowski (1968, 1985) and the history and development of Duden feature in Russ (1980), Hatherall (1986) and Sauer (1988).

Although orthography is strictly normalized, the other levels of language allow a certain amount of variation, usually nationally determined. Pronunciation, for example, shows considerable variation, despite the setting up and propagation of a standard ‘stage pronunciation’ (Bühnenaussprache), codified by Theodor Siebs (1862–1941) and a committee of mostly North German speakers. The pronunciation recommended by Siebs was set up as a standard in 1898, not only for the stage but for public speaking in general, later being applied to broadcasting. In 1922 the title of his book was amended to Deutsche Bühnenaussprache-Hochsprache because of its wider application. In 1958 it became simply Deutsche Hochsprache. The edition of 1969, entitled Deutsche Aussprache, Reine und gemä igte Hochlautung, allowed alternatives for the first time. No further edition has appeared.

The common core of inflectional and syntactic patterns together with the basic vocabulary is codified in the Duden volumes and set up as ‘normative’ not only for the united Federal Republic of Germany but also for Austria, Switzerland and some other countries. Of the eleven volumes, one of the most interesting is the grammar. Although a pre-1945 grammar existed, the first post-war edition (Grebe et al. 1959) was really a completely new grammar. It was normative, using terms such weniger gebräuchlich, seltener, älter, mundartlich, umgangssprachlich, falsch, fehlerhaft, nicht anerkannt to describe forms and constructions which were not acceptable to the editors. Also many of the authorities (die gro en Leitbilder) cited were from the nineteenth and even the eighteenth century. The second edition of the Duden Grammatik (Grebe et al. 1966) was more explicit on norms, with more emphasis on description of the presentday language. The third edition of the Duden Grammatik (Grebe et al. 1973) was a grammar of the written language. It recognized an ‘open’ norm, for example it allowed variant forms, and supported its statements of use by empirical studies. The fourteenth edition of the Duden Grammatik (Drosdowski et al. 1984) had a new editor-in-chief and was linguistically more complex. It was intended to be descriptive as well as prescriptive, continuing the acceptance of the ‘open’ norm. Russ (1991) shows in more detail how the different editions of the grammar evolved in their treatment of the following: (1) the pronunciation of postvocalic /r/; (2) the mood of the verb in clauses of purpose after damit; (3) the type of subjunctive used after als (ob); and (4) the subjunctive with würde.

The vocabulary of present-day German has been codified and standardized in the two main dictionaries, the Wörterbuch der deut...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ABBREVIATIONS
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. VARIATION IN GERMAN
• 3. GERMAN IN AUSTRIA
• 4. THE GERMAN LANGUAGE IN SWITZERLAND
• 5. GERMAN IN EAST GERMANY
• 6. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
• 7. GERMAN SPELLING AND ITS REFORM
• 8. GERMAN GRAMMAR
• 9. WORD FORMATION
• 10. VOCABULARY