Definately vs. Definitely

cacho wrote: darqDean wrote: ^ I think you'll find that's spelt "Norway" Are you sure cause with my mental calculations the 'r' is omissed, isn't it

darqDean wrote: NaturalScience wrote: Something I fail to understand is the whole "lose/loose" confusion in website posts.   Ha!, that's the one Peter tripped me up on.    Having an estuary accent, I tend to pronounce lose with a long "o" sound, but loose with a short "u" sound, hence my occasional slip when writing the words.

I think that the confusion is also caused by the fact that other, similar words are spelled with double "o" ... for example "to choose". choose/chosen, but lose/lost ... they're both pronounced similarly though.

^ daß stimmt natürlich!

paolo.beenees wrote: They could just remove the "ß" symbol completely,

I hope not - I always thought that was so cool in the short time I studied some German.  My (at-the-time) German girlfriend had a good laugh when I first encountered it and asked why there were all these "betas" in the German text. 

I'd start by saying that to me it seems pretty obvious, definitely is the correct way of spelling. But I never thought of it that way. In fact, I've always thought of it as a word that derives from its origins, and dividing it to unconventional portions you can actually see, that definately could not pass as proper language. Also, some sense it makes too if you compare it to infinitely, when if really wrong you'll misspell them both, or realise you've been wrong, who knows. Well, we learn them really systematically in Finland, possibly because our language is very fonetical and written as spoken in almost every occasion.

BaldJean wrote: "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York". very confusing for the non-native speaker, and still kids learn how to write and spell correctly. which is one of the reasons I found the German reform of orthography which took place a few years ago completely laughable. although I know what has been changed and could write "correctly" I refuse to do so and stick to the old spelling; the new one just seems so put-on. Friede is of the same opinion, by the way, as are several German authors

I must disagree, though you're native, and I'm just beginning my studyes in German filology, and then, I started learning German in 1994 which was just before the reform, and have been grown to use the newe system. However, there has been discussion in England also for such a reform, which I'm totally opposed to. See, comparing these two languages, I find them very different in origins, fonetics, usage, everything. First of all, the isoglossic division in Germany is still pretty huge. Where-ever you go you'll meet different languages or dialects, which is understandable, as, well, the country has only been united for its time, 74 years before 1990 and even though Luther translated the bible a lot earlier, they still spoke their own Niederdeutsch in north for a long time as they did with the Hochdeutsch somewhere else, and all this was just vague divisions to very different dialects.

Now that they've started reforming the language, it's basically only to make the literacy whole, as a great amount of common words are borrowed from other languages such as French and English and have in fact no rules as to how they might be spelled or pronounced, at least in the sense that would make them sound German. And that some don't use the imperfect form, the past tense as it is, makes no sense relly when others do use it. A little coherency here and there isn't such a bad thing when you're in a position where people who write as their profession are not aware what word stands for what.

With English it's different. The linguistic reform that it went through was as you mentioned, with Shakespeare, and after that it's been build to last, to make sense, and that was quite a few years earlier than the German equivalent. Though now they're discussing making the English spelling easier and more simple for people that can't spell, for occasions such as this thread. However, the head of the SSS or Simplifying Spelling Society herself wants to actually speak as people do, and keep it in writing, I find this alarming. First of all, the examples go around creating an as simple language as possible, where the difficult, and not authentic English word "language" would be accepted in writing as "speak", "speek" or "language" which would ease up understanding and forming your own writing. I find it terrifying that someone is actually considering allowing this internet speak to become something everyday, or something commonly allowed.

Especially when you notice, that while the Brits have serious problems understanding their own language and how it's spelled, the best speakers of the literal language there are in fact foreign speakers. And this is only because of the level of education there. We start school at the age of 7 here normally. When I was on 3rd grade, that is 10 years old we had visitors from England. And these kids were our age but couldn't understand as much of their own language, written, as we did. The goal should not be to lover the level of spelling to make the language sound retarded, as most
internet talking does nowadays but to actually provide your children the means to learn what they need in their life. However we're talking about a society which still evolves round a class based society and in that way is really discriminative to people who can't speak properly or write.

Germans problem is, that it's basically the language of the civilized world, with its history of philosophy and political thinking, and thusly it's not something you'd want to cut back on. however I find it great that they have decided to give everyone the same chance of using it.

Passionist wrote: I'd start by saying that to me it seems pretty obvious, definitely is the correct way of spelling. But I never thought of it that way. In fact, I've always thought of it as a word that derives from its origins, and dividing it to unconventional portions you can actually see, that definately could not pass as proper language. Also, some sense it makes too if you compare it to infinitely, when if really wrong you'll misspell them both, or realise you've been wrong, who knows. Well, we learn them really systematically in Finland, possibly because our language is very fonetical and written as spoken in almost every occasion. BaldJean wrote: "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York". very confusing for the non-native speaker, and still kids learn how to write and spell correctly. which is one of the reasons I found the German reform of orthography which took place a few years ago completely laughable. although I know what has been changed and could write "correctly" I refuse to do so and stick to the old spelling; the new one just seems so put-on. Friede is of the same opinion, by the way, as are several German authors I must disagree, though you're native.

I am not a native German speaker. I came to Germany at age 24. I was born in the USA and lived there for the first 24 years of my life. I came to Germany a year before you, though I had German lessons when I went to school


Edited by BaldJean - March 27 2008 at 17:19

Passionist wrote: Oh I've never been to Germany for more than 1 week, just studying the language here. I thought you were though, with the location in your profile and all.

let me give you an example of one of the stupid changes in German orthography: the stem of a plant used to be "Stengel", which was perfectly fine with me. in the new orthography it has become "Stängel". the explanation given is that the word is derived from "Stange", which means "pole, rod, stake". "Stängel" is supposed to be a diminutive of that word. they want to show the etymology of the word by this change of orthography. however, while it was written "Stengel" I never had to think about the etymology and could just take the word for what it referred to; now I am forced to think "little stake" and find the word absolutely ridiculous, because this kind of diminutive (using the ending "el" or just "l" for words which already end with "e" and changing the "a" to the umlaut "ä") is usually used in certain dialects only. so "Stängel" looks as if you are using a dialect word all of a sudden, which has a totally hilarious effect. an absolutely idiotic change.
mark that I am not opposed to the reform as a whole; there were a few good ideas in it, especially about the using of commas. but they went too far in many ways. why did they not stick to optional spellings, as was allowed for words like "Fotografie", which I, having studied ancient Greek, always wrote "Photographie". this alternative spelling was allowed. but now they make a "Delfin" out of a "Delphin" (the German word for "dolphin"), and it no longer is optional. everything inside of me shrieks at that. and "filosofie" is an abomination; it will always remain "Philosophie" for me because of my ancient Greek background.
there is definitely an inconsistency in this reform: while with words like "Stängel" they refer to etymology for the spelling they don't apply the same rule to "Philosophie". they tried to bring more logic into the spelling, but all they managed to do is create more confusion. which is why Friede and I oppose this reform and deliberately spell some words "wrongly"



Edited by BaldJean - March 28 2008 at 04:57

Passionist wrote: Strange, but my studybook claims, that words like Philosophie can still be written as they are, and the replacement of Ph with F is just an option, which it wasn't before. And I also always found Stängel to make more sense

you wouldn't think "Stängel" makes more sense if you were familiar with some of the German dialects ; it looks as if the author uses Hessian dialect all of a sudden and means "Stange". and what is the point of that?

maybe "filosofie" is an option only, but I still don't like it. kids are not as stupid as these philogolists (sic!) suggest to us; on the contrary, all kids are geniuses. by allowing "filosofie" we lose the Greek roots of the word, and I don't think we should. as already mentioned, I never use "Fotografie" either, although that had been allowed before already; for me it still is "Photographie", from the Greek "photos" for light and "graphein" for "to write" (originally "to carve", because words used to be carved into stone; you can see the similarity between "to carve" and "graphein" still). as someone who had to learn ancient Greek for my study of history (and Latin as well) it is simply hurtful to the eye.
what's more important: the Duden (named after Konrad Duden), a German dictionary, used to be not only the source for, it defined correct spelling; however, the editors of the dictionary don't acknowledge some of the spellings which are officially allowed now. so we have lost the one reliable source for correct spelling of the German language, which I personally think is a pity