Duden
Encyclopedia
The Duden (ˈduːdən) is a German dictionary
German dictionary
German dictionaries have a history dating back to the Brothers Grimm, who started work on the first major dictionary of the German language, the Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1838. The Duden dictionary dates back to 1880, and is currently the prescriptive source for the spelling of German....
, first published by Konrad Duden
Konrad Duden
Konrad Alexander Friedrich Duden was a Gymnasium teacher who became a philologist. He founded the well-known German language dictionary bearing his name Duden.- Life :...
in 1880.
Currently the Duden is in its 25th edition and published in 12 volumes, each covering different aspects like loan words, etymology, pronunciation, synonyms, etc. The first of these volumes, Die deutsche Rechtschreibung (German Orthography), has long been the prescriptive source for the spelling of German.
The Duden is updated regularly, with new editions appearing every four or five years.
Konrad Duden
In 1872, Konrad Duden, headmaster of a GymnasiumGymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
(secondary school) in Schleiz
Schleiz
Schleiz is a town in the district of Saale-Orla-Kreis in Thuringia, Germany.- Location :Schleiz is in the Thuringian Vogtland area, an area of wooded hills on the borders of Thuringia, Saxony, Bavaria and the Czech Republic...
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
, published a German dictionary called the Schleizer Duden, the first Duden. In 1880 he published the Vollständiges Orthographisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache ("Complete Orthographical Dictionary of the German Language"); this seminal treatise was declared the official source for correct spelling in the administration of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
the same year. The first edition of this Duden contained 28,000 entries.
From 1901 to 1996
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
soon followed suit.
In the ensuing decades, the Duden continued to be the de facto standard for German orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
this tradition continued separately in East and West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
and Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
.
In West Germany, some publishing houses began to attack the Duden "monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
" in the 1950s, publishing dictionaries that contained alternative spellings. In reaction, in November 1955 the ministers of culture of the states of Germany
States of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...
confirmed that the spellings given by the Duden would continue to be the official standard.
East German Duden (Leipzig)
In 1954, the first published Duden appeared in MannheimMannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
, the western counterpart to the traditional Duden printing city of Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
. The first East German Duden appeared in Leipzig in 1951 but was largely ignored as illegitimate by West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. The printing continued in both Mannheim and Leipzig until the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
in 1989. The differences between the two versions of Duden printed during this period appear in the number of Stichwörter. When the printing of the two Dudens began, in 1954 and 1951, the number of Stichwörter included was roughly the same. As the split between the printers continued, the East German Duden slowly began diminishing the number of Stichwörter in its volume while the West German Duden printed in Mannheim increased the number of Stichwörter. The major differences between the two Dudens are seen in the lexical entries. The East German Duden included various loan words from Russian, particularly in the area of politics, Politbüro and Sozialdemokratismus. Also new to the East German Duden were words stemming from Soviet agricultural and industrial organization and practices.
Of note is the few semantic
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
changes that are recorded in the East German Duden that originated from contact with Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. The East German Duden records the nominalization of German words by adding the suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-ist, borrowed from the Russian suffix. Also recorded is the increasing number of adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s and adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s negated with the prefix -un, unernst and unkonkret. The few lexical and semantic items recorded in the East German Duden come from der große Duden because the printing press in Leipzig did not publish the multiple volume Duden that has become the current staple.
Volumes
- Die deutsche Rechtschreibung – The German Spelling
- Das Stilwörterbuch – The Style Dictionary
- Das Bildwörterbuch – The Picture Dictionary
- Die Grammatik – The Grammar
- Das Fremdwörterbuch – The Dictionary of Foreign Words
- Das Aussprachewörterbuch – The Pronunciation Dictionary
- Das Herkunftswörterbuch – Etymology
- Das Synonymwörterbuch – The Thesaurus
- Richtiges und gutes Deutsch – Correct and Good German
- Das Bedeutungswörterbuch – The Meaning Dictionary
- Redewendungen – Idioms
- Zitate und Aussprüche – Quotations and Sayings