The 24th edition of "Germany's most important book" – the Duden dictionary of the German language – was announced almost as a monument meant to immortalize the end of a decade-long dispute over the right to exist of "old" and "new" spelling and punctuation rules. Its authors finally abandoned endless attempts to distinguish right from wrong and placed on bookstore shelves an unprecedented compromise – a dictionary that allows several spelling variants for a given word or expression. It is equipped, however, with "recommendations" for choice, which the dictionary's compilers tried to present as a kind of revolution even before its release. "The decisive factors for us were actual word usage, optimal text comprehension, and, as far as possible, simplified spelling," says the head of the Duden editorial group, Matthias Wermke, and, as if signing off on an incomplete success, adds a phrase about how "damn difficult it is to convey all existing variants."
From time immemorial, followers of Konrad Duden considered their main task – if not afraid of lofty words – to be the preservation of national culture, which is impossible without a careful attitude to one's own language, unified rules of word usage, a clear division into styles, and finally, without basic literacy. Duden, a gymnasium teacher in Bad Hersfeld, Hesse, when creating his "Complete Orthographic Dictionary," fought against the dominance of "court lexicographers," through whose prayers separate rules existed not only in every German principality but almost in every village. Approximately the same thing – unification! – was designated as the main direction of activity by members of the International Council for German Spelling, created in 2004 in response to criticism of the 1996 spelling reform, in order, with the help of the experts included, to "better structure the language and eliminate contradictions to meaning."
Over the course of its work, the Council managed to reform three and a half aspects of the reform – punctuation, solid-separate spelling, syllabification, and the use of lowercase or uppercase for lexemes whose fate falls into the area of "solid-separateness" – and last winter suspended its work. The current edition of Duden disregards the advice of this collegial body: it gives, for example, the verb combination sitzen bleiben as a single unit both when used in its direct meaning ("to remain seated") and in its figurative meaning ("to repeat a year"), leans toward the form Runder Tisch ("round table"), while simultaneously recommending der heilige Geist ("holy spirit"), completely ignoring the idea of formatting fixed expressions according to their meaning. The addition to the list of common dictionary units of everyone's favorites like Sudoku or USB-Stick may seem quite successful; at the same time, it is completely inexplicable that the dictionary ignores the lexeme Public Viewing – which has every chance of becoming "word of the year" after the FIFA World Cup. The new Duden brought back the comma before the conjunctions und and oder – that's good. It did not explain when exactly fixed expressions with verb or adjective components should be written together, and personal pronouns with a capital letter. That's bad. The 200 pages of commentary instead of legitimizing the norm are bad, undermining the very idea of unification and doing a disservice to teachers weary of the reform, who still have not received instructions on when they should lower grades in written work.
The main competitor of Duden – the Deutsches Wörterbuch Wahrig, released in late June – at first glance appears more consistent: it declares its readiness to accept the Council's recommendations, even providing a welcome letter to the reader from the head of the international body, Hans Zehetmair. But in this consistency, Wahrig seems to deceive itself: it promises to release new editions every two years, "depending on the filling of dictionary entries with results of research in the area of language development," and also – attention! – to regularly publish supplements to the main work "to assist enterprises," equipped with lists of lexemes recommended for use in particular professional fields. To assist department heads, in the best traditions of the Middle Ages ready to evaluate the intellectual qualities of a job applicant based on their command of the local language norm. To assist the apologists of Germany's feudal fragmentation, which Konrad Duden in the late 19th century and his successors in the 20th century managed to overcome – in a cultural sense – by preserving a unified norm of the German language despite 40 years of ideological confrontation between two systems.
Today few would risk speaking of unity, even though current politicians are little interested in the behind-the-scenes games of linguists. Everyone speaks as they wish, and writes even more so. Hans Zehetmair sends inquiries to the Conference of Ministers of Culture about the possibility of resuming the work of the Council (the issues of dashes and hyphens have not yet been resolved, and they promised to settle the problem of the letter ß for the people), the editorial board of Duden intends to constantly "capture the nerve of linguistic reality in communities and communes," while major media continue to write each in their own way, since the reform is not mandatory for them but only recommended for use.
And the reform – well, what about the reform? It has been introduced and is in effect. On a voluntary-compulsory level, implying the conclusion of court proceedings that were initiated by unhappy parents because of unfairly lowered grades for their schoolchildren. Also implying the further reissuing of dictionaries, which have turned from monumental studies into periodicals. Incidentally, not exactly cheap – the brand new 'Duden' costs €20, the equally fresh 'Wahrig' costs €14.95. It is unlikely that the average German schoolboy will include any of them in the list of his desk books. He, in all likelihood, will follow in composing written texts the notorious 'linguistic reality' shaped by the Internet and SMS. And the literacy of today's schoolboy will be assessed not soon – when he, having grown a little older, appears before the head of the HR department, armed with the opus of the court lexicographer at that time.