German orthography

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Template:IPA notice German orthography, although largely phonemic, shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogic to other spellings, not phonemic. Nevertheless, the pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling, once the spelling rules are known.

Contents

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History of the German orthography

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Middle Ages

The oldest known German texts date back to the 8th century. They are written mainly in monasteries in different local dialects of Old High German. In these texts, the letter z along with combinations such as tz, cz, zz, sz or zs was chosen to transcribe the sounds /ts/ and Template:IPA. This is ultimately the origin of the modern German letters z, tz and ß (an old sz-ligature). After the Carolingian Renaissance, however, during the reigns of the Ottonian and Salian dynasties in the 10th century and 11th century, German was hardly ever written any more, the literary language being almost exclusively Latin.

Only in the High Middle Ages, during the reign of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, there was again significant production of German texts. Around the year 1200, there was a first tendency towards a standardized Middle High German language and orthography, based on the Franconian-Swabian language of the Hohenstaufen court. However, that language was only used in the epic poetry and minnesang lyric of the knight culture. These early tendencies of standardization ceased in the interregnum after the death of the last Hohenstaufen king in 1254. Certain features of today's German orthography still date back to Middle High German: The use of the trigraph sch for Template:IPA and the occasional use of v for /f/ because around the 12th and 13th century, prevocalic /f/ was voiced.

In the following centuries, the only variety that showed a marked tendency to be used overregionally was the Middle Low German of the Hanseatic League, based on the variety of Lübeck and used in many areas of Northern Germany.

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Early modern period

Until the 16th century, a new overregional standard developed on the basis of the East Central German and Austro-Bavarian varieties. This was influenced by several factors:

  • Under the Habsburg dynasty, there was a strong tendency to an overregional language in the chancellery.
  • Since Eastern Central Germany had only been colonized during the High and Late Middle Ages in the course of the Drang nach Osten by people from different regions of Germany, the varieties spoken were compromises of different dialects.
  • Eastern Central Germany was culturally very important, with the universities of Erfurt and Leipzig and especially with the Luther Bible translation which was considered exemplary.
  • The invention of printing lead to an increased production of books, and the printers were interested in using an overregional language in order to sell there books in an area as wide as possible.

In the Mid 16th century, when during the Counter-Reformation the catholicism was reintroduced in Austria and Bavaria, the Lutherian language was rejected. Instead, a specific Southern overregional language was used, based on the language of the Habsburgian chancillery.

In Northern Germany, the Lutheran East Central German replaced the Low German written language until Mid 17th century. In the early 18th century, the Lutheran standard was also introduced in the Southern states and countries, Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland, due to the influence of Northern German writers, grammarians such as Johann Christoph Gottsched or language cultivation societies such as the Fruitbearing Society.

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19th century and early 20th century

Even though by mid 18th century, one norm was generally established, there was no institutionalized standardization. Only with the introduction of the compulsory education in late 18th and early 19th century, the spelling was further standardized, though at first independently in each state, due to the political fragmentation of Germany. Only the foundation of the Prussian German Empire in 1871 allowed for further standardization.

In 1876, the Prussian government instituted the 1st Orthographic Conference in order to achieve a standardization for the entire German Empire. However, its results were rejected, among others by Prime Minister of Prussia Otto von Bismarck.

In 1880, Gymnasium director Konrad Duden published the Vollständiges Orthographisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (‘Complete Orthographic Dictionary of the German Language’), known simply as Duden. In the same year, the Duden was declared to be authoritative in Prussia. Since Prussia was by far the largest state in the German Empire, its regulations also influenced spelling elsewhere, for instance, in 1894, when Switzerland recognized the Duden.

In 1901, the interior minister of the German Empire instituted the 2nd Orthographic Conference. It declared the Duden to be authoritative, with a few innovations. In 1902, its results were aproved by the governments of the German Empire, of Austria and of Switzerland.

In 1944, the Nazi German government planned to reform the orthography. However, due to the war, this reform was never implemented.

After 1902 German spelling was essentially decided de facto by the editors of the Duden dictionaries. After World War II, this tradition was followed with two different centers: Mannheim in West Germany and Leipzig in East Germany. By the early 1950s, a few other publishing houses had begun to attack the Duden monopoly in the West by putting out their own dictionaries, which did not always hold to the “official” spellings prescribed by Duden. In response, the Ministers of Culture of the federal states in West Germany officially declared the Duden spellings to be binding as of November, 1955.

The Duden editors used their power cautiously, because they considered their primary task to be the documentation of usage, not the creation of rules. At the same time, however, they found themselves forced to make finer and finer distinctions in the production of German spelling rules, and each new print run introduced a few reformed spellings.

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German spelling reform of 1996

See: German spelling reform of 1996.

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Features of German spelling

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Vowel length

Even though vowel length is phonemic in German, it is not consistently represented. However, there are different ways of identifying long vowels:

  • A vowel in an open syllable (a free vowel) is long, for instance in ge-ben ‘to give’, sa-gen ‘to say’.
  • The digraph ie always represents long Template:IPA, for instance in Liebe ‘love’, hier ‘here’. This use is a historical spelling based on the Middle High German diphthong Template:IPA which was monophthongized in Early New High German. It has been generalized to words that etymologically never had that diphthong, for instance viel ‘much’, Friede ‘peace’ (Middle High German vil, vride).
  • A silent h indicates the vowel length in certain cases. That h goes back to an old /x/ in certain words, for instance sehen ‘to see’, zehn ‘ten’, but there are also many words where it has no ethymological justification, for instance gehen ‘to go’ or mahlen ‘to mill’.
  • The letters a, e, o may be doubled in a few words, for instance Saat ‘seed’, See ‘sea’, Moor ‘moor’.
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Double consonants

Even though German does not have phonemic consonant length, there are many instances of doubled consonants. A single consonant that follows a checked vowel is doubled if another vowel follows, for instance immer ‘always’, lassen ‘let’. These consonants are analyzed to be ambisyllabic because they constitute not only the syllable onset of the second syllable, but also the syllable coda of the first syllable which must not be empty because the syllable nucleus is a checked vowel.

By analogy, if a word has one form with a doubled consonant, all forms of that word are written with a doubled consonant even though they do not fullfill the conditions for consonant doubling, for instance rennen ‘to run’ → er rennt ‘he runs’; Küsse ‘kisses’ → Kuss ‘kiss’.

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Typical letters

ei: This digraph represents the diphthong Template:IPA. The spelling goes back to the Middle High German pronunciation of that diphthong, which was Template:IPA. The spelling ai is only found in very few words.

eu: This digraph represents the diphthong Template:IPA which goes back to the Middle High German monophthong Template:IPA represented by iu.

ß: This letter alternates with ss. For more information, see: ß.

st, sp: At the beginning of the main syllable of a word, these digraphs are pronounced Template:IPA. In the Middle Ages, the sibilant that was inherited from Proto-Germanic /s/ was pronounced as an alveolo-palatal consonant Template:IPA or Template:IPA, unlike the voiceless alveolar sibilant [s] that had developed in the High German consonant shift. In the Late Middle Ages, certain instances of Template:IPA merged with [s], but others developed into Template:IPA. This change to Template:IPA was represented in certain spellings, for instance Schnee ‘snow’, Kirsche ‘cherry’ (Middle High German snê, kirse. The digraphs st, sp, however, remained unaltered.

v: The letter v occurs only in a few native words. In these native words, it represents /f/. This goes back to the 12th and 13th century, when prevocalic /f/ was voiced to /v/. That voicing has been lost again in the late Middle Ages, but the v still remains in certain words, for instance in Vogel ‘bird’ (hence the letter v is sometimes called Vogel-ef), viel ‘much’.

w: The letter w represents the sound /v/. In the 17th century, the former sound [w] became [v] but the spelling remained the same. An analogical sound change had happened in Late Antique Latin.

z: The letter z represents the sound Template:IPA. This sound, a product of the High German consonant shift, was written with z since Old High German in the 8th century.

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Foreign words

In many cases, the foreign spellings are retained, for instance ph or y in words of Greek origin (as in Physik).

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Grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences

This section lists German letters and letter combinations, and how to pronounce them transliterated into the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is the pronunciation of Standard German. Note that the pronunciation of standard German varies slightly from region to region. In fact, most German speakers can be told where they come from by their accent in standard German (not to be confused with the different German dialects).

Foreign words are usually pronounced approximately as they are in the original language.

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Consonants

One pronounces double consonants as single consonants, except in compound words.

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Short Vowels

Consonants are sometimes doubled in writing to indicate the preceding vowel is to be pronounced as a short vowel. One-syllable words are pronounced with long vowels, with some exceptions such as an, das, es, in, mit, and von. The e in the endings -el and -en is usually silent. The ending -er is often pronounced Template:IPA, but in some regions, people say Template:IPA or Template:IPA.

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Long Vowels

A vowel usually has a long sound if the vowel in question occurs:

  • as the final letter (except for e)
  • followed by a single consonant
  • before a single consonant followed by a vowel
  • doubled
  • followed by an h

Long vowels are generally pronounced with greater tenseness than short vowels.

The long vowels map as follows:

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Diphthongs

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See also

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