Coming from a language that is strictly controlled by an Academy as well, I can say that I too feel that English is much looser, much freer [than my native Portuguese] when it comes to the standard language. I feel that changes not only occur more frequently and faster in English, but they're also more easily accepted and embraced by the standard dialect, because there's no organization telling otherwise. And to me, that's good, it's one of the things that I love about the English language.
standardisation has dramatically improved many cultures and not just in terms of language but in many other parts of society. I think one of the best examples of this is cargo containers, before the 60s all cargo was shipped as is and would require many workers. a dock/port could employ 500+ people and could unloading ships could take days now all is required is 50 people MAX and ships can be unloaded in a matter of hours.
In Finland there was actually a big fight in the 1800s over which variant of Finnish would be used as the standard. In the end they compromised and made it a compound of several dialects. It's actually kind of a mixed result. On one hand this makes all dialects more or less equal and helps people learn other dialects but on the other hand it's confusing and requires a lot of strange extra rules because it tries so hard to give all variants a specific use.
@1p2o3i The structure of standard german derived from high german dialects. Southern germans can switch easily between standard language and dialect. Today, in North Western Germany and the region around Hanover, they speak indeed almost without dialect. But in the past about 3 generations ago, they used to speak lower german dialects. These dialects were so different, that people learned standard german almost like a forreign language. In those areas the dialect is fading away.
Oh, and regarding 'Umgangssprache', when I first came to Britain it also took me some time to find out what 'quid' means and that 'wasted' has more than one meaning ;-)
the word "Standarte" is also still used in germany - although most commonly "Flagge" is preferred for flag. Its one of the many lovely examples that showcase how the european languages evolved
Interresting video. I enjoyed it very much, in particular her german pronounciation, and how she tried to say the norwegian name Einar (Ingvald) Haugen in german :) The norwegian pronounciation has a pronounced rolling R, and the "au" in haugen is more "æu" than the german "aʊ", and the "en" at the end fully pronounced. Standards are great for cooperation and mass production. I've taken up linguistics as an interrest the last couple of years, and i find this very channel entertaining :)
Being German I can only agree with what Ms McLelland says at 3:55 - the question of compound words vs hyphenation is a pain, at least in those cases where absolutely correct spelling is important (e.g. applications). To be honest, in many cases and especially with unusual words I myself have no idea whether to hyphenate or to make it a compound. Maybe there is no rule? I guess it's similar in English with hyphens vs spaces (e.g. self-control vs self control).
Fascinating. In my humble opinion German is one of the most interesting sounding languages on the planet. I'm afraid my vocabulary is limited to ordering schnitzel and reading musical notation, though.
I am a german student and spelling is really a big issue. Even sometimes our teachers are confused about the spelling, because it got changed after they learned it. It is not that rare, that you look up the spelling of the word, on the internet, even in school, sometimes, when we write a text, we look up the spelling with smarthphones.
Brady, at 4:25 Nicola explains that "Hochdeutsch"/"high German" (meaning speaking 'without dialekt') used to mean the way of speaking German in Southern Germany. It is however actually considered to be a very Mid-West to North-Western way of speaking the language, the South is a very dialect-heavy part of the country. Did she flub there or did "Hochdeutsch" actually move up from the South centuries ago and I got her meaning wrong?
Oh yes - yiddish is quite heavily influenced by the german language. To an extent that even without any knowledge in the yiddish language native german speakers are able to have a somewhat contextual understanding of many words and phrases. In german we would spell it "gucken" actually, but aside from that its the same
I remember hearing a story about how Italian was standardized by a group of people getting all the regional dialects together and picking the one that sounded the best to represent the whole country linguistically. I think that's really cool.
Thankyou Nicola - most interesting, and I also love your 'german accent/pronunciation' with the german words ;) I really like these wotw vids, and find the 'geneology' or history of common english words fascinating.
Hi Nicola, sorry, I'm in need to correct you here. The Duden _was_ the official book for German language until 1996. The "Reform der deutschen Rechtschreibung" changed that status to merly a dictionary. Thank you for your Videos and say Hi to Brady! ;-)
really? wow - im a native speaker, but i never knew you could write it that way. Its actually the first time i am ever seeing it spelled that way. But it really is in the Duden. Who knew
@DeoMachina not speak, but all written communications are required to be gramatically correct. It's the same in norwegian for both our written languages (where all government employees must respond in the same form as the original communication unless something other is specified), but mistakes are well tolerated outside legal papers.
I'm going to create a new word before i die. I've made a few attempts that caught on for a while with friends.., just need to get to the wider audience :D
German is very phonemic that means that if you know the spelling rules, you are able to know how to pronounce a word. If you're not sure, write it down and pronounce it. Is it Fluß or Fluss (river). Spelling rules say that double consonant means short vowel. So Fluss. Is it Fuß or Fuss (foot)? Spelling rules say ß means long vowel in front of that. So Fuß is correct. And check the meaning of a word. Endlich or Entlich (finally)? Endlich because end means Ende in German.
@virumoz Basically all Germans pronounce it with a "k", I never heard anyone speak it with a "g". That would in fact be considered sounding very peculiar and as young people would say, quite "gay".
:) ha. The vid was just begging for that to be said, and nobody had yet and i certainly couldnt resist. god god, that comment does not seem anywhere near a year ago - more like 8 months.... :(
I'd just like to add that standardization of the German language was heavily influenced in the beginning by southern Germany b/c of its number of successful printers. The centre changed though to mid-eastern Germany with Luther and his bible translations. So, standard German is not a codification of one dialect but a mixture of several ones.
I sometimes think that the Finnish standard should be more lenient with variety. It works for English too, so why not. I don't think it'd be a problem if westerners wrote "ilonen hevonen" (happy horse) and easterners "iloinen hevoinen" just like US-Americans write "color" and others write "colour". Right now the standard language says that the correct versions are "iloinen hevonen": one form from the east, the other from the west. It's a mess.
The swedish academy has long since established that a maximum of two of the same letters are allowed after each other, and if they would start muddling with rules like that there would be a public outrage! But they aren't a private organization and would have a harder time doing it. Must be a pain in Germany!
Coming from a language that is strictly controlled by an Academy as well, I can say that I too feel that English is much looser, much freer [than my native Portuguese] when it comes to the standard language. I feel that changes not only occur more frequently and faster in English, but they're also more easily accepted and embraced by the standard dialect, because there's no organization telling otherwise. And to me, that's good, it's one of the things that I love about the English language.
Nicola, your Dutch pronunciation was just fine.
standardisation has dramatically improved many cultures and not just in terms of language but in many other parts of society. I think one of the best examples of this is cargo containers, before the 60s all cargo was shipped as is and would require many workers. a dock/port could employ 500+ people and could unloading ships could take days now all is required is 50 people MAX and ships can be unloaded in a matter of hours.
In Finland there was actually a big fight in the 1800s over which variant of Finnish would be used as the standard. In the end they compromised and made it a compound of several dialects. It's actually kind of a mixed result. On one hand this makes all dialects more or less equal and helps people learn other dialects but on the other hand it's confusing and requires a lot of strange extra rules because it tries so hard to give all variants a specific use.
@1p2o3i The structure of standard german derived from high german dialects. Southern germans can switch easily between standard language and dialect. Today, in North Western Germany and the region around Hanover, they speak indeed almost without dialect. But in the past about 3 generations ago, they used to speak lower german dialects. These dialects were so different, that people learned standard german almost like a forreign language. In those areas the dialect is fading away.
The part about the submitting to the mistakes people make is just so true....and it ticks me off every single time
Oh, and regarding 'Umgangssprache', when I first came to Britain it also took me some time to find out what 'quid' means and that 'wasted' has more than one meaning ;-)
the word "Standarte" is also still used in germany - although most commonly "Flagge" is preferred for flag. Its one of the many lovely examples that showcase how the european languages evolved
Interresting video. I enjoyed it very much, in particular her german pronounciation, and how she tried to say the norwegian name Einar (Ingvald) Haugen in german :)
The norwegian pronounciation has a pronounced rolling R, and the "au" in haugen is more "æu" than the german "aʊ", and the "en" at the end fully pronounced.
Standards are great for cooperation and mass production.
I've taken up linguistics as an interrest the last couple of years, and i find this very channel entertaining :)
Being German I can only agree with what Ms McLelland says at 3:55 - the question of compound words vs hyphenation is a pain, at least in those cases where absolutely correct spelling is important (e.g. applications). To be honest, in many cases and especially with unusual words I myself have no idea whether to hyphenate or to make it a compound. Maybe there is no rule? I guess it's similar in English with hyphens vs spaces (e.g. self-control vs self control).
Fascinating. In my humble opinion German is one of the most interesting sounding languages on the planet. I'm afraid my vocabulary is limited to ordering schnitzel and reading musical notation, though.
I am a german student and spelling is really a big issue. Even sometimes our teachers are confused about the spelling, because it got changed after they learned it.
It is not that rare, that you look up the spelling of the word, on the internet, even in school, sometimes, when we write a text, we look up the spelling with smarthphones.
In Portuguese, the word 'standard' didn't move from its 'flag' meaning. 'Estandarte' is a fancy word for 'flag'.
Brady, at 4:25 Nicola explains that "Hochdeutsch"/"high German" (meaning speaking 'without dialekt') used to mean the way of speaking German in Southern Germany. It is however actually considered to be a very Mid-West to North-Western way of speaking the language, the South is a very dialect-heavy part of the country.
Did she flub there or did "Hochdeutsch" actually move up from the South centuries ago and I got her meaning wrong?
Oh yes - yiddish is quite heavily influenced by the german language. To an extent that even without any knowledge in the yiddish language native german speakers are able to have a somewhat contextual understanding of many words and phrases. In german we would spell it "gucken" actually, but aside from that its the same
I remember hearing a story about how Italian was standardized by a group of people getting all the regional dialects together and picking the one that sounded the best to represent the whole country linguistically. I think that's really cool.
Thankyou Nicola - most interesting, and I also love your 'german accent/pronunciation' with the german words ;)
I really like these wotw vids, and find the 'geneology' or history of common english words fascinating.
by the way, there are both entries for "gucken" and "kucken" in the Duden dictionary. just saying.
Nice video - wish you would make more!
In Polish "sztandar" still means "a flag", "a banner".
Hi Nicola,
sorry, I'm in need to correct you here. The Duden _was_ the official book for German language until 1996. The "Reform der deutschen Rechtschreibung" changed that status to merly a dictionary.
Thank you for your Videos and say Hi to Brady! ;-)
This video is even more interesting if you speak both languages
@DeoMachina im pretty sure its not regulating normal coversation, only official documents etc.
really? wow - im a native speaker, but i never knew you could write it that way. Its actually the first time i am ever seeing it spelled that way.
But it really is in the Duden. Who knew
@DeoMachina not speak, but all written communications are required to be gramatically correct.
It's the same in norwegian for both our written languages (where all government employees must respond in the same form as the original communication unless something other is specified), but mistakes are well tolerated outside legal papers.
I'm going to create a new word before i die. I've made a few attempts that caught on for a while with friends.., just need to get to the wider audience :D
@eggroll9000 The reason for this is a commercial campaign from Deutsche Telekom, which spelled it "wrong" to be more "T-". ;-)
German is very phonemic that means that if you know the spelling rules, you are able to know how to pronounce a word. If you're not sure, write it down and pronounce it. Is it Fluß or Fluss (river). Spelling rules say that double consonant means short vowel. So Fluss. Is it Fuß or Fuss (foot)? Spelling rules say ß means long vowel in front of that. So Fuß is correct. And check the meaning of a word. Endlich or Entlich (finally)? Endlich because end means Ende in German.
@virumoz Basically all Germans pronounce it with a "k", I never heard anyone speak it with a "g". That would in fact be considered sounding very peculiar and as young people would say, quite "gay".
:) ha. The vid was just begging for that to be said, and nobody had yet and i certainly couldnt resist. god god, that comment does not seem anywhere near a year ago - more like 8 months.... :(
Well, I'd say people in Saxonia still pronounce it more like a "g", but indeed, it's strange that spelling and pronunciation differ so much.
I'd just like to add that standardization of the German language was heavily influenced in the beginning by southern Germany b/c of its number of successful printers. The centre changed though to mid-eastern Germany with Luther and his bible translations. So, standard German is not a codification of one dialect but a mixture of several ones.
In Dutch, the word is 'standaard'.
That is pretty cool actually!
i thought: This German women has a very good pronunciation :-)
It took me a while until i found out she actually IS British
I sometimes think that the Finnish standard should be more lenient with variety. It works for English too, so why not. I don't think it'd be a problem if westerners wrote "ilonen hevonen" (happy horse) and easterners "iloinen hevoinen" just like US-Americans write "color" and others write "colour". Right now the standard language says that the correct versions are "iloinen hevonen": one form from the east, the other from the west. It's a mess.
I wonder if kuken comes from the Danish kigge...
The swedish academy has long since established that a maximum of two of the same letters are allowed after each other, and if they would start muddling with rules like that there would be a public outrage! But they aren't a private organization and would have a harder time doing it. Must be a pain in Germany!
In Portuguese too! But it's not a common word, it sounds archaic or snob.
of course i do. that has been around for ever, i just happened to be the first to say it here. couldnt help myself. regards :)
I think Yiddish is like... practically German, but written with Hebrew letters.
Oh, Brady, won't you open a Linguistics channel?
NOM NOM NOM KNOWLEDGE TASTY NOM GIMME MORE NOM NOM NOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you know what nyak63RUS was referring to? I don't think you'd get that many "likes" if people didn't read into it the inuendo. :)
plural of dude?
There's a law that regulates how government workers can speak? What's the punishment for using slang?
People from the east actually say "hevoinen"? Fancy that. Then again, I am a bonehead from Tavastia, so it's no wonder I've never heard it that way.
It saddens me that a rough sexual comment achieves a "top comment" position.
hey.... how is that a 'rough sexual comment'? U sure u not reading things that arent there...? regards ;)
Duden.
Cheeky.
oh - and imagine how sick of that one the poor old linguists must be!
Sounds like Einar Haugen was a bit of a cunning linguist.