Matthias Warkus skreiv:
> Eivind schrieb:
>> For example, in Germany, you'll hear statements like;
>> Everyone says "gukken", but the correct pronounciation is really
"kukken"
>> I've tried asking why, exactly, something is "wrong" german if it is
>> infact what most people who actually speak german actually say. Mostly
>> I get a blank stare, people don't even get the question. They're so
>> used to outside authority defining "right" and "wrong".
> This particular example is pretty much meaningless, considering this is
> one of the classic north/south differences. There are large parts of
> Germany where, in cases such as this one, people think the less popular
> pronunciation is "correct" because, having grown up speaking a dialect
> or High German with a heavy regional accent, they have a tendency
> towards hypercorrection when speaking "pure" High German.
But that still doesn't explain how something can be "wrong" german
allthough large groups of actual germantalking people actually in
everyday speech talk that way.
Yeah, some of it is miniscule respect for dialects in Germany (a
tendency to say something is 'wrong' when really it is 'local
variation') but this is more than that.
> Actually, there *is* an official German *orthography*, laid down by
> international agreement.
Yeah. And there are rules for what counts as correct writing in schools,
say (Neue Rechtschreibung), but this doesn't mean that all the
newspapers who does -not- follow the new way of writing are somehow
'wrong'.
(as an aside, the official orthography makes zero sense in a few cases,
so it's no wonder it's ignored by many. For example, it's officially
'Gelbe Teichrose' (large 'G') but 'red Rose' (small 'r') because the
former is actually the name of the species, thus you need a major in
biology to be able to write correctly...
> There is no official German pronunciation, though,
Exactly. Nor should there (imho) be. I still regularily hear people
refer to this or that pronounciation as "wrong". Which is fair enough
when someone who simply doesn't know the language makes mistakes, but
seems strange to me when used about something that millions of germans do.
Eivind
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