Deutsche Fassung: Zwölf Stellen, an denen das Deutsche leichter werden könnte
Whether German has „gone wrong“ anywhere is a value judgement. Linguistics does not answer it: it describes change, it does not grade it. A different question can be asked soberly. Where does German cost learners and writers effort that carries no information? And what have neighbouring languages done at the same spots?
The yardstick here is learnability and rule consistency. It competes with two others: robustness over a noisy channel and expressive differentiation. Every simplification below costs some of both. That belongs in the ledger.
A. Grammar: only across generations
1. Three genders down to two
Masculine and feminine merge; neuter stays. Dutch (de/het) and mainland Scandinavian have already been down this road.
Now: der Löffel, die Gabel, das Messer (the spoon, the fork, the knife)
Then: de Löffel, de Gabel, das Messer
Counter-entry: gender resolves reference. „Der Arzt sprach mit der Patientin, bevor sie ging“ (the doctor spoke with the patient before she left) only works with three genders.
Anyone who thinks German gender is random is wrong. Köpcke and Zubin (1996) show that gender assignment is not arbitrary, and Wegener (1995) finds that assignment rules can be stated for roughly two thirds of the core vocabulary. The problem is not chaos but the third paradigm.
2. One adjective ending
Strong, weak, mixed: three inflection series that merely repeat what the article already says.
Now: ein guter Wein, der gute Wein, guter Wein
Then: ein gute Wein, der gute Wein, gute Wein
Dutch manages with -e and zero.
3. Prepositions with one case
wegen, trotz, während, dank (because of, despite, during, thanks to): the dative is already established in usage. The norm lags.
Now: wegen des Regens (norm), wegen dem Regen (usage)
Then: both standard
The decline of the genitive is nothing new. Researchers agree that the dative is taking over genitive functions; Szczepaniak (2014) traces the process back to Early New High German.
4. A plural default for new words
-s for loanwords, -(e)n for native coinages, umlaut plurals no longer productive.
Now: der Blog / das Blog, die Blogs / die Bloge
Then: der Blog, die Blogs – fixed, not rolled
Wegener (1999) puts it in a formula: not chaotic, but complex. Complex is fine for the inherited stock. New words need one rule.
5. Tens before units
This is the point with the largest practical payoff. Norway switched in 1951 by parliamentary resolution. The reasoning was practical: whoever hears „one-and-twenty“ on the phone must buffer the unit and write the number backwards.
Now: vierundzwanzig – written 24, heard 4-and-20
Then: zwanzigvier – heard as written
Norway also shows how it ends: in everyday speech the old order lives on; the new one has fully won only for telephone numbers. For phone numbers, drug doses and lab values, that is precisely the gain.
B. Orthography: possible by decree
6. Drop the ß
Switzerland has done it: no longer taught in schools from 1938, the NZZ as the last daily gave up in 1974, formally removed with the 2006 spelling reform.
Now: Straße, Maße, Masse
Then: Strasse, Masse, Masse
Context carries the minimal pairs. Switzerland has lived with it for almost ninety years.
7. Linking-s by corpus
Official language preserves forms that usage has abandoned. The tax office levies Einkommensteuer; everyone else has long called it Einkommenssteuer.
Now: Einkommensteuer (official), Einkommenssteuer (everyday)
Then: the office follows the corpus
This is the only item on the list that deserves the word „wrong turn“: a norm running against its own speech community.
8. Compound or separate by stress
Now: sitzen bleiben (stay seated) vs. sitzenbleiben (repeat a school year); kennenlernen or kennen lernen (both allowed)
Then: main stress on the first element → one word; otherwise two
One criterion instead of three plus a list.
9. Commas only at clause boundaries and parentheses
Now: Er beschloss(,) früh aufzubrechen, weil er den Zug erreichen wollte.
Then: Er beschloss früh aufzubrechen, weil er den Zug erreichen wollte.
Making the infinitive comma optional in 2006 was half a step.
10. Moderate lower-casing
Now: Das Essen war gut, das essen war schwer. (The food was good, the eating was hard.)
Then: Das essen war gut, das essen war schwer.
The example shows what is lost. Noun capitalisation is a reading aid; whether it measurably speeds reading is weakly evidenced. Here the ledger stays open.
C. Pragmatics and lexicon
11. Forms of address
Sweden’s du reform began with a speech. On 3 July 1967, Bror Rexed, the new director-general of the health board, told his staff he would address everyone as du and expected the same in return. Rexed was a neuroanatomist; every medical student knows the spinal laminae named after him.
Now: Könnten Sie mir bitte den Befund bringen? / Kannst du mir den Befund bringen?
Then: one form
In German this can only happen through institutions, not decrees. Companies and newsrooms have started.
12. Gender-inclusive forms
Three routes exist; none is official.
Neutral form: die Studierenden
Short form: die Student*innen
Generic feminine: die Studentinnen (for everyone)
Systemically the neutral form fits the paradigm best; the short form creates read-aloud problems; the generic feminine inverts the asymmetry rather than dissolving it. The decision is political. Dressing it up as linguistics helps no side.
D. What stays
The sentence bracket, verb-final subordinate clauses, free compounding: that is the core. „Sie schlug den Antrag nach drei Stunden Sitzung und zwei Vertagungen schließlich vor“ – only the last word tells you whether she proposed the motion (vorschlagen) or rejected it (abschlagen). That is not a bug but the system. Reform there would break law, literature and four hundred years of readability.
Two follow-on costs apply to any reform. First: two generations of dual norms, as after 1996. Second: reforms only reach schools and administration. The Council for German Orthography knows this and avoids recommending between variants, preferring to watch what wins.
Sources. Köpcke K-M, Zubin D. Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen. In: Lang E, Zifonun G (eds). Deutsch typologisch. Berlin: de Gruyter; 1996. – Wegener H. Das Genus im DaZ-Erwerb. In: Handwerker B (ed). Fremde Sprache Deutsch. Tübingen: Narr; 1995. – Wegener H. Die Pluralbildung im Deutschen – ein Versuch im Rahmen der Optimalitätstheorie. Linguistik online 1999. – Plewnia A, Witt A (eds). Sprachverfall? Dynamik – Wandel – Variation. IDS-Jahrbuch 2013. Berlin: de Gruyter; 2014 (incl. Szczepaniak on the genitive). – Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache: Das Fugenelement (gfds.de). – Wikipedia (de): Norwegische Sprache, numerals section. – NZZ, 3 July and 4 August 2017, on the Swedish du reform. – apostrophgroup.ch: Das traurige Schicksal des ß. Gender facts for Dutch and Scandinavian from general knowledge, not separately verified.
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