To be fair, Austrian writer Robert Menasse is going after The System in his German spelling reform diatribe, not the 2 l8, m8 clan, but it’s still heavy stuff. Apparently–and I find him a bit difficult to follow–the reform was racist because it Germanised both “German” and “force-assimilated” immigrant words, neoliberal because it has created a Darwinist chaos of variants which threatens thought itself (kein Denken ohne Sprache), and reactionary because it ignores natural language development while digging up corpses long dead.
“I want to inhabit my language,” he writes, “but without the corset of racism, neoliberalism and grotesque atavism [?: Rückwärtsgewandtheit]. I speak and write German. Great, expansive, deep German, which the reformers do not understand. And cannot abide.”
I’m not sure that Mr Menasse knows what words like “racist” and “neoliberal” mean–I’m not sure that I do–but I’m not getting into that fight. Instead I wonder whether it might not be time to contemplate a rewrite of a Walter Davis (28/7/1935, Chicago, Yazoo L-1025) classic:
Your [clunk] underskirt is [clunk] ringing wet,
You’re doin’ something wrong, doin’ something wrong,
Been doin’ some-thing, I CAN TELL BY THE WAY YOU SPELL!
It is still devilishly hot outside.
Similar posts
- Spanish traditional theme park architecture
More traditional building for Colin Davies: Real stone is expensive and makes it hard to plug holes and to plaster, so in - Germanic monkey puzzles
Some of the recent obituaries of super-poet Willem Wilmink (1936-2003) managed to avoid mentioning his writings in Twents, despite the fact - a pleasant evening out
Very few journalists in any language can compete with Frits Abrahams, who currently writes five days a week for Holland’s best - Obscure Spanish footie team told to get rid of Cross of St George on alternative kit
Apparently it might incite violence. Particularly, one suspects, if the directors of the taxpayer-funded Permanent Seminar on International Migration and Foreigners - The Calathumpian Band and its horse-fiddle, great trombone and gyastacutas
Slightly off-topic, but irresistible, from Henry Hiram Riley‘s pseudo-ethnography, Puddleford and its people (New York, 1854): Another amusement, frequent in the country,
What does a ringing wet skirt sound like?