Stretch marks

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A stretch mark ( length mark ) is an additional grapheme or graphematic feature (for example a diacritical mark ) related to a vowel grapheme (vowel letters ), which indicates that a vowel is spoken long .

In German spelling , in addition to the doubling of vowels, the letters e and h appear as expansion symbols, in some proper names there are c , i , u and w .

Stretch mark in German

The length designation in German

The systematic, meaning-changing difference between short, relaxed and long, tense vowels (as in Wahl / Wall, den / denn, him / in, Ole / Olle, pult / Pult, Tönchen / Tönnchen, Fühler / Füller) is particularly typical and exists for German not in many other languages.

In German, the vowel length is generally not indicated by the vowel letter itself, but by the following consonant letters. In open syllables and in syllables that are closed with a single consonant letter, the vowel is long (for example, d u , D ud en , d uz en ); In syllables that are closed with two or more consonants, the vowel is short ( d umm , D ung , D unst ). This rule has some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of words follow it.

In German, stretch marks are redundant in the vast majority of cases; they almost exclusively mark long vowels that are pronounced long anyway due to the consonantic context.

Elongation h

The stretching h (colloquially imprecise: "mute h") often appears after the long vowels a, ä, e, o, ö, u and ü; in exceptional cases after i and y, the latter only in proper names. Examples:

  • Strand, clay, hollow, carrot, chair, atonement
  • him, Ihle , Wyhl

The stretch-h is to be distinguished from the syllable fugue-h (for example, see in the word ), which functions as a hiat canceler and is mute in the sense that it is not breathed in like an ordinary [h]. The practical function of the hiatus eradication is completely eliminated, if either the reduction syllable omitted, so that the h at the end of a word is (as seen ), or if the word as a contraction of a word syllable joint-h derived been (for example, ahd. Vehede → ndh. feud ; ahd. nâhjan, sew → ahd. nat → nhd. seam ).

The stretch h appears exclusively in connection with the consonant letters <l>, <m>, <n> and <r>. Etymologically, the stretch-h goes back to the model of a few word stems that still contained a spoken h in Old High German or Middle High German, which later fell silent through contraction (ahd. Stahal , mhd. Stahel , nhd. Steel ). It found rapid distribution in the second half of the 16th century; however, it only reached part of the vocabulary. In the 25th edition of the Spelling Dudens, only 128 word stems can be found that have an extended h. The stretch h never appears in foreign words.

In some cases, the stretch h makes a difference in meaning ( whale / choice, paint / grind, empty / teach ).

From a graphemical point of view, the length designation by the silent h in most word stems is redundant because the vowel length is clearly indicated there by the syllable border <l, m, n, r>. The only words in which it offers information that is not contained in the syllable margin are: penalize (vs. Andes ), search (vs. found ) and Öhmd (vs. shirt ).

Elongation e according to i

In the stressed syllables of German hereditary words, after the letter <i>, when it stands for the long vowel [iː], an elongated e appears almost regularly. Like the stretch-h, the stretch-e is redundant in that the consonantic context indicates the vowel quantity anyway.

In proper names, the graph <ie> does not designate a long vowel, but a diphthong , for example in the word family or in the name of the Brandenburg town of Ziesar [tsiˈeːzaʁ].

origin

Historically, the stretch-e goes back to the diphthong , which is still indicated in the spelling <ie>. A good third of the word stems that are written with <ie> already had a diphthong <ie> in Middle High German:

  • ahd. tiuf → mhd. deep [ˈtiɛf] → nhd. deep [tiːf]
  • ahd. chrēg → mhd. kriec [ˈkʀiɛk] → nhd. war [kʀiːk]
  • ahd. liubī → mhd. love [ˈliɛbə] → nhd. love [ˈliːbə]

In rare cases, the <ie> is a diphthong <üe> underlying (mhd. Müeder → NHG. Bodice ).

At the transition to early New High German , [iɛ] was monophthongized to [iː] .

A diphthong has been preserved in some dialects, for example in Bavarian or Swabian liab . Since at the transition to early New High German the vowels that were still short in open syllables became long vowels, many more syllables were created with [iː], which - following the example of monophthonged syllables - were also written with <ie> without ever being etymologically there e would have been present:

  • ahd. smid → mhd. smit → nhd. smith
  • ahd. gibil → mhd. gibel → nhd. gable
  • ahd. wisa → mhd. wise → nhd. Wiese
This article or section needs revision: The following statement is incorrect and unsubstantiated. -ieren existed before Adelung and -iren existed after Adelung.
Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

<ie> has been written in the suffix –ieren since the time of the second edition of Adelung's Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect (1793–1801). Goethe still wrote -iren in Urfaust (1772–1775) .

This article or section needs revision: The following statement is misleading and unsubstantiated. gieng still existed after Adelung and even into the 1890s (e.g. Alfred Ritter v. Sypniewski (1898): "Our Kaiser went to Berlin [...] But he didn't go alone, [...] He went too as the loyal friend of Emperor Wilhelm II. "). Adelung may have promoted eradication, but he was unable to get the spelling erased. It was certainly not deleted until after the Second Orthographic Conference and its official implementation in the early 20th century.
Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

Adelung promoted the deletion of the stretch-e from words like caught, gives, went, hung , which in Upper German were spoken with [iː] and therefore often spelled with <ie>. Goethe had written “giebts” in Urfaust .

→ For an overview of the etymology of all word stems with <ie> see: wikt: Directory: German / words with ie

Occurrence

In German hereditary words , the long, closed [iː] is indicated very regularly by a stretching e (examples: love, crawl, crooked, play, pretty, smear, sneeze, enjoy, offer, puss ).

  • It is omitted in some very common words ( dir, mir, we ).
  • It is also omitted in the hereditary words beaver, muskrat, bise, thistle, tide, tiger and bison .
  • Distinction occurs with the hereditary words lid / song, against / again .
  • Many words with <ie> are of Low German origin: beast, hazy, nasty, lilac, tile, grienen, kieken, keel, gill, deliver, cute, posh, beep, plieren priel, squeak, grooved, squeak, sniff, siel, triezen , Dungeon .
  • Most hereditary words with <ie> are trochaic , i.e. two-syllable with the emphasis on the first syllable, whereby the reduction syllable can be omitted. An exception is the three-syllable word paradise or entropy .

A number of irregular verbs that do not have an [iː] in the infinitive produce an [ies] written as <ie> in the past tense , occasionally in the present tense. Examples:

  • to write, simple past: wrote; blow, blew; hit, hit; call, called
  • give birth, present tense : gives birth; happen, happen; Read reads

Occasionally, not only diffraction forms but also derivations produce an <ie> ( give, productive ).

In loan and foreign words, the expansion e is generally not used.

  • However, it is written in the endings -ier (en) and -ie .
  • It is written in the loan words Fries, heave, Miene, lousy, Niete, Piek, Priem, Ries, Spiere .
  • Occasionally the opposition of <i> (for loan words) and <ie> (for inherited words) makes a distinction. This applies to the word pairs fiber / fever, mine / miene, seal / seal, style / stem .

Like all long vowels, the sound [iː] appears almost exclusively in open syllables. The <ie> is therefore followed by at most one consonant letter. Exceptions can arise in the inflection and derivative forms of some words ( halt , service, settlement, goldfinch, beep ), in individual cases in non-inflected forms ( beast , squeak ).

<i / ie> before <h>

Unlike the stretch-h, the stretch-e can appear before all consonants and without any subsequent consonants. Often it comes before a syllable fugue-h (to draw ). If no further syllable follows ( borrowed, sees, cattle ), this syllable joint-h is often misinterpreted as an expansion-h. However, a strain graph <eh> does not exist.

The stretch e is omitted in bare syllables if the [iː] is at the beginning of the syllable ( Igel , Ida , Isegrimm ). In the rare cases in which a bare syllable with [iː] also fulfills the conditions for setting an elongation h - if the syllable ends with l, m, n, r - <ih> is written ( you, him , him; Ihle ).

Expansion e after other vowels

After vowels other than the <i>, the German spelling e was retained as a length character only in proper names. The use occurs more frequently in the Lower Rhine via Westphalia to the North German regions, thanks to the influence of the written language from Middle Dutch .

In Westphalia it occurs in place names such as Buer , Coesfeld , Flaesheim , Hoetmar , Laer (but see: Bochum-Laer ), Oer-Erkenschwick , Raesfeld , Raestrup , Saerbeck or Soest . In Mülheim an der Ruhr , the Hugenpoet Castle should be mentioned. In the Rhineland, for example, there are the place names Baerl , Baesweiler, Kevelaer , Schaephuysen and Straelen . Also Bernkastel-Kues in Rhineland-Palatinate knows the strain e. In Ostbelgien the Dehnungs-e is also used, for example in the place names Baelen or Raeren ; an example from the Netherlands is Haelen .

Examples from Northern Germany are Bad Oldesloe and Itzehoe or the districts Vaensen, Buensen and Suerhop of the city of Buchholz in the Nordheide . Many (north German) family names contain an extension e, which is not spoken as an umlaut, but is only read as an extension symbol.

Examples:

Exceptions:

In southern German names, the Dehnungs-e may have been used to indicate a diphthong being spoken. The family name Hueber is therefore correct [ 'hʊəbər ]. In the Swabian place name Buchloe , the e is pronounced as a third syllable separated from the o : [ ˌbuːx.ˈloː.ə ]. In the North German place name Laboe [ la'bøː ], in the Rhenish Moers [ mœʁs ], in the Bochum district of Laer [ leːr ], in Oelde [ ˈœldə ] in Westphalia or in Uelzen [ ˈʏltsən ] in Lower Saxony , the e indicates a completely normal umlaut. Furthermore, an overlap with the Dutch spelling oe for [⁠ u ⁠] as in Hoek van Holland observed.

Doubling the vowel letter

In a number of words in German orthography, the doubling of a vowel is used to indicate length. However, this doubling is not productive in the German language. The elongation h is used in phonetic descriptions .

Examples:

  • Maar, hall, seed, state
  • Army, emptiness, sea, scheel, tea
  • Boat, bog, moss, zoo

The double vowels -ii- and -uu- are always spoken separately in the German language. They usually occur as a vowel clash of the word stem and derived endings, for example identical, vary, associate, development, satisfaction, to the disadvantage. In rare cases (especially in terms of pronunciation) this also applies to -oo- - for example to the zoological garden .

There are no double umlauts, with umlaut the vowel is regularly simplified: sow (therefore without syllable fugues-h), Sälchen, Bötchen.

The stretching e - especially in foreign words but also in (older) hereditary words (such as "[the] meadow") - also occurs after an i; More about this under elongation e according to i .

Elongation i

The Dehnungs-i has only been used in proper names in German spelling . The use occurs more frequently in the Rhineland .

The stretch-i is not pronounced, but only indicates that the preceding vowel is to be spoken long. Examples in the Rhineland are place names such as Moitzfeld , Troisdorf , Roisdorf , Boisheim , Froitzheim and Buisdorf . Typical family names with a stretch-i are Voigt , Ploigt, Hoigt or Fussbroich . Above all, the ending -broich (originally marshland) can be found in many city names and district names on the Lower Rhine. Examples are Grevenbroich , Hackenbroich , Hardterbroich , Kleinenbroich , Korschenbroich , Huppenbroich , Rollesbroich and the former Bottenbroich .

The i originally had this function in the place name Duisburg . In the last centuries (the exact period is unknown) a change has taken place, so that the preceding u is no longer pronounced as [ uː ] (long u), but as [ yː ] (long ü). Duisburg is generally pronounced as [ ˈdyːsbʊʁk ]. This similarly applies to the Bonn district Duisdorf [ dyːsdɔʁf ] or the Kerpen neighborhood Buir [ byːɐ̯ ], while the district of Duisburg Duissern [ dʏsɐn ] with short u (because of the double consonants) [⁠ ʏ ⁠] is pronounced, making the strain i has no function. Also the place Uissigheim [ ʏsikʰhaim ] in Baden-Württemberg is in the latter manner with a short u [⁠ ʏ ⁠] pronounced.

Elongation u

Probably unique in the German-speaking world is the use of a u in the place name Pouch to indicate the long pronunciation of the preceding o . Although there is a place called Perouse in Baden-Württemberg , this name was brought with them by emigrants from Piedmont .

Strain w in the digraph -ow-

Especially in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Brandenburg , Berlin , in the eastern part of Saxony-Anhalt and in Wendland there are many place names with the ending -ow . The w is mute in such cases, it is only used to extend the preceding o to the phoneme / oː /. In Sorbian , the Slavic language that is still spoken in some areas there, [w] is spoken in the spoken language as unsyllabic u . In the Middle Ages there was also the w as u ( Gaue of Alamannien, Swabia, Alsace and Hochburgund ) in German and was preserved in the place name Owen .

Examples:

Dehnungs-w are also represented in family names, for example in Hans Modrow .

Counterexample of expansion-c in the digraph -ck-

In northern German place and family names there is sometimes a ck after long vowels. Contrary to the standard German orthography, these spellings do not show any abbreviation of the preceding vowel. When the place name Lübeck , whose / e / was originally pronounced long, often a short one is already articulated, and Mecklenburg ( ˈmeː- ) is already pronounced by many with a short vowel.

Examples of place names with a long pronounced vowel:

Contrary to popular belief, the <c> cannot be viewed as a length character, as it is not a clear marking that is in contrast to an unmarked spelling, which would usually correspond to the short pronunciation. These spellings are remnants of older spellings, as they were still to be found in the 16th century, for example in merckenn, Lauffenn or vnndt, which are referred to as pile of letters . From a current point of view, it is therefore a question of the incorrect use of doubly represented consonants (in family and geographical names this is not only common with ck , but also with ff, ss, tz and more rarely with pp, tt, dt , cf.Hauff , Heuss, Holtzbrinck, Schwartzkopff, Lietzensee; Kneipp, Württemberg, Domagk, Bodelschwingh, Creutzfeldt ).

In order to preserve the original pronunciation, the c was removed from the spelling of the name in some places . The city of Hamburg, for example , renamed all field names that contained -beck ( Barmbeck , still preserved in Lord von Barmbeck ) to -bek in 1947 . The spelling of Wandsbek and Reinbek had already been changed in 1877 (at that time still in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein ).

In numerous North German family names , ck can be found after a long vowel, the best known is perhaps Buddenbrock , other examples are Dickmann , Brockmann , Beckefeld , Brackmann , von derdecke or Bröckerhoff . Here, too, the transition to the short pronunciation of the vowel preceding the c takes place .

The Low German spelling on ck extends into the Brandenburg area, where there are several places with the spelling Buckow (together with the Sorbian ending -ow ) or in spellings like Schmöckwitz (with the Wendish ending -witz ). However, many spellings on ck are increasingly spoken with a short vowel.

Criticism and initiatives to abolish stretch marks

Since the expansion signs are redundant (the vowel length is regularly indicated by the spelling of the end of the syllable) and, moreover, are not set systematically and therefore have to be memorized , they form one of the main difficulties in German orthography . The schools have therefore repeatedly called for their abolition:

In an essay on German orthography in 1855, Rudolf von Raumer demanded a consistent phonetic spelling. He wanted to replace the stretching h with a double spelling of the vowel letter.

On January 27 and again on October 30, 1920, a commission of experts met in the Weimar Republic with representatives of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the Ministries of Education in some German countries, Austria and Switzerland to prepare a reform of the German orthography. The committee made its final proposals on April 8, 1921. One of them was the categorical abolition of stretch marks. The expansion e should only be retained in the wording. The proposals failed due to resistance from reform opponents, especially booksellers.

At the end of August 1931, the Educational Association of German Book Printers adopted the Erfurt spelling program, which called for the abolition of stretch marks except for homophones.

In October 1941, Bernhard Rust , Reich Minister for Science, Education and Public Education , submitted proposals to the Reich Ministry of the Interior for a simplification of German spelling, including the elimination of expansion symbols. The Ministry of the Interior rejected the initiative as "not important to the war effort".

In the spring of 1946, the Federation for Simplified Spelling (BVR), founded in Zurich in 1924, published a reform plan for the renewal of German spelling, which also called for the deletion of expansion symbols.

The last major attempt to abolish the stretch marks was made in the Stuttgart Recommendations (Recommendations for the Renewal of German Spelling) of 1954. The initiator was a working group for language maintenance, which - along with other representatives from the FRG, GDR, Austria and Switzerland - were members of the Duden -Editorial team and the linguists Otto Basler , Theodor Frings , Werner P. Heyd , Walther Mitzka , Hugo Moser , Wolfgang Steinitz , Franz Thierfelder , Leo Weisgerber , Hans Glinz and Rudolf Hotzenköcherle . In addition to various other simplifications, the Stuttgart recommendations provided that the graph <ie> in general and the expansion h after a, ä, o, ö, u and ü should be omitted, but doubled vowel letters and expansion h after e should be retained. The reform proposals were strongly rejected in the press, especially since Thomas Mann , Hermann Hesse and Friedrich Dürrenmatt had spoken out against them. In error, these three authors did not refer to the Stuttgart recommendations at all, but rather to reform proposals that had been drawn up a year earlier at a Salzburg conference. The Conference of Ministers of Education, for which the Stuttgart recommendations had been drawn up, distanced itself from the working group after the public protests and denied having commissioned the proposals at all.

Length characters in other languages

Doubling the vowel letter

In Dutch , vowel doubling is the regular form of writing long vowels - there vowels in closed syllables (syllables that end in a consonant) are regularly spoken short, while in open syllables (syllables that end in a vowel) they are spoken lengthened. Accordingly, long vowels in Dutch only have to be marked if they are in a closed syllable. This is generally done by doubling vowels, only with I by adding an E. The exception is the e, which is also doubled in open syllables when stretched ( zee , mee ). The consistent application of this system in Dutch means that the vowels are written differently due to the different pronunciation in the singular and plural: zoon (son) vs. zones (sons). In return, the short syllable must be indicated by the following double consonant if the consonant falls to the following syllable in a word form: zon (sun) vs. zonnen (suns).

The Finnish and Estonian languages go one step further: Here, long vowels (and long consonants) are consistently written with double letters, since long and short vowels can be used in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Examples from Finnish: tuli (the fire or he / she / it came; short stressed vowel) vs. tuuli (it was blowing (wind); long stressed vowel) and tulli (the inch; short stressed vowel, long consonant); talon (of the house, genitive ; short unstressed vowel) vs. taloon (into the house; illative ; long unstressed vowel)

In the Japanese syllabary hiragana , a long vowel is represented by adding the final vowel sign, with long E usually represented as ei (with an I-syllable after it) and long O as ou (with an U-syllable after it). Examples: ま ほ う ( mahou , magic; where the second character represents ho and the third character represents u ); お か あ さ ん ( okaasan , often transcribed as o-kā-san ; salutation for one's own mother. The second character is read ka , the third a . It should be noted that kā is usually written with Kanji; see here ).

Stretching in Belgium

In the Dutch-speaking area of Belgium , the expansion e is very common in place names, but due to the newer spelling that has been adapted to Dutch , it is often only used in French . In Brussels you can find : Schaerbeek / Schaarbeek , Laeken / Laken , Roedebeek / Roodebeek (a district in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert / Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe ) and Koekelberg , which, like the Flemish Willebroek, is now often no longer with a long O ( [ oː ]), but rather Dutch is pronounced with U ([ uː ]).

Diacritical marks

In addition to the addition of expansion marks, the length of vowels is marked in many scripts by adding diacritics . Long vowels in normalized Middle High German are represented with a circumflex to distinguish them from short vowels, and in Latin it is sometimes handled analogously with a macron (overline, macron) instead of a circumflex. Example: mîn (medieval Middle High German: min ; mein), Rōmānī (the Romans; three long vowels).

In Hungarian , long vowels are consistently marked with diacritics. The corresponding long vowels for A, a, E, e, O, o, Ö, ö, U, u, Ü and ü are Á, á, É, é, Ó, ó, Ő, ő, Ú, ú, Ű and ű. Different spellings occur only in names, such as (a German-based) stretch h or vowel doubling, for example in the family name Gaál [ gaːl ].

In Czech long spoken vowels are given the čárka (dash): a - á, e - é, i - í, o - ó, u - ú (beginning of the word), u - ů (otherwise), y - ý. In language development, these have mostly emerged from double vowels as they still occur in East Slavic languages, cf. czech překrásn á - russian прекрасная ( prekrasn aja ). This origin as a double vowel makes the Czech language special in that unstressed vowels are also spoken long, which is only found in a few other languages ​​(again in Hungarian or Finnish, but also in German, example: "Heimat").

Independent stretch marks

The Japanese language uses the katakana syllabary to denote long vowels a longitudinal stroke ( chōon ) to indicate the length of a preceding vowel. Example: ラ ー メ ンrāmen . The vertical stroke is also used in the hiragana syllabary , although it is not permitted there. With words that are written with Kanji (Chinese characters), long vowels do not have to be marked, as the character or characters result in a clear pronunciation and meaning.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Dehnungs-e  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Strain-h  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Strain-i  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Word lists in the Wiktionary

Others

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German spelling: rules. Website of the Council for German Spelling (PDF file), p. 18ff.
  2. ↑ Cf. Agathe Lasch: Middle Low German Grammar. Halle 1914, p. 176, § 336: " ck stands after long, stretched or short vowel or consonant."
  3. ↑ Peter von Polenz: German language history from the late Middle Ages to the present. Volume 1, 2nd edition. Berlin / New York 2000, p. 175 f. Especially for Middle Low German see Lasch: Middle Low German Grammar. P. 136, § 236.
  4. ↑ a b c History of German orthography. Retrieved October 24, 2014 .
  5. ^ Rudolf von Raumer: About German orthography. In: Zeitschrift für die Österreichische Gymnasien 1, 1855, pp. 1–37 and 2, 1855, pp. 537–580 ( digitized version of the separate print Vienna 1855 ).
  6. ↑ Christian Hess: The way to the new German spelling. Retrieved October 23, 2014 . ; History of German orthography. Retrieved October 24, 2014 .
  7. ^ History of German orthography. Retrieved October 24, 2014 . ; Federal website for simplified spelling
  8. ↑ Recommendations for the renewal of the German spelling: "Stuttgarter Recommenders". Confederation for simplified spelling, October 15, 2012, accessed on April 18, 2020 . ; Wolfgang Kopke: Spelling Reform and Constitutional Law . School law, personality law and cultural constitutional aspects of a reform of German orthography. Mohr Siebeck, 1995, p. 68 ff . ( limited online version in Google Book Search); Hildtraud Strunk (ed.): Documents on the recent history of a reform of the German orthography. The Stuttgart and Wiesbaden recommendations, 2 volumes, Verlag Georg Olms, 1998, ISBN 978-3-487-10590-1
  9. ^ Fred Karlsson: Finnish grammar. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-87548-203-4 , §§7 (short and long sounds) and 10 (accent and intonation)