The Linguist

FEATURES witnessed many spelling and orthographical mistakes during his teaching career. Duden was operating under challenging circumstances, as publications had to be approved by government officials. In 1880, with Prussia's consent, he published Vollständiges Orthographisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache ('The complete Orthographic Dictionary of the German Language'), building the foundations for standard and uniform German orthography, often referred to as Urduden. The publishing house was Verlag Bibliographic Institute in Leipzig. Like other dictionaries, the Duden went through several refinement stages. Following a second edition in 1882-84, it was significantly enriched in the third edition. Published in 1887, this included etymological references and word origins, following the OED methods, and was recognised as innovative and transformational. Duden continued to work closely with representatives of the German Federal States, Austria-Hungary and the German Ministry of Education. In 1901, he took an active part in the German Orthographic Conference, at which officials agreed on a uniform orthography. Austria and Switzerland became part of the standard rule in 1903. Almost a century later, the Duden played a significant role in the German Orthography Reform (Reform der deutschen Rechtschreibung) of 1996, which aimed to make spelling rules more consistent. The dictionary reclaimed its role as a language bible for students, linguists and others, particularly when determining whether to use 'ss' instead of 'ß' (e.g. Fluss replacing Fluß) or 'f' instead of 'ph' (der Elefant rather than der Elephant). Into the technological age The overarching goal of the OED and Duden is to be current and useful for their readers. Every few years, their publishing houses release an update, often including an amendment if research has shown that corrections are needed. In 2017, Duden added 5,000 words. Many of the recent additions to both dictionaries are to do with technological developments. In German, there are also a number of newly adopted English words, such as tindern ('to use a dating app'; from Tinder). The englishification of German also engenders neologisms which combine English and German words, for example Eatplatz (a place where you can grab some food) and Frauenswap for Frauentausch ('wife swap'), or which conjugate English words according to German grammar rules (meeten, gecancelt, gescreenshotet, gechattet, gegooglet). Keeping the dictionaries current isn't just about expanding the word list and adding new information to existing content; it is also about the format. In 1992, the OED moved into the electronic age with its first CD-Rom edition. Duden followed in 1996. This format was a great success but has now been overtaken by the online editions (oed.com starting in 2000 and duden.de in 2011), which expand the dictionaries further. The publishers had modern platforms for language discovery in mind and both offer an app. The online editions now seem to be more popular than the printed and CD versions, firstly because of their accessibility and ease of use, and secondly because they may appear to be better value for money, as they are regularly updated. The online OED offers more than 600,000 words and quotations for a current annual cost of £100. As committed as the publishers and linguists are to expanding the dictionaries and adding new findings, their work is never done. As languages constantly evolve, the OED and Duden will always be living libraries of words and phrases in more or less common use. Notes 1 Ogilvie, S and Safran, G (2020) The Whole Word Book. Dictionaries in the nineteenth century, OUP 2 Ibid. 54 3 Weinrich, H (1976) Die Wahrheit der Wörterbücher, Leipzig, Schwann, 57 4 'Konrad Duden'. In Duden; www.duden.de/ueber_duden/konrad-duden

• Cover