The Rules Are Changed: German Gets Less, and More, Complicated
The search for a perfect language -- undertaken by ivory tower scholars, absolute geeks, and other people with the appropriate reality disconnects -- is a manifest of a bunch of miserable ape-bastards trying to convince themselves that utopia lies along the horizon in between scratching their asses and rolling about in their own filth. The latest entry hitting the webs, Lingua France Nova, would work for the EU if it were a magical candy palace with peppermint captains and a lollypop light rail. (Good luck navigating the page -- naturally, they know how important immersion is!)
Nietzsche said it best -- language is unconcerned with truth, insofar as it's willing to accept 180 synonyms for the same idea. 196, if the word is "snow" and that urban legend about Inuit is true. And people have about as much reason to take in an artificial language, however reasonable and gap-filling it may be, as they would Klingon. But what if you're taking an already-extant, lovable curiosity of a language and shoehorning into reforms that nearly everyone, outside of the aforementioned nerds, is against? Prepare for the scheißesturm! (Is that Eszett applicable under the new rules?)
The German language has been too unruly for too long, and they've decided, in letter at least, to tame the pony:
The latest reform, begun in the early 1990s and led by expert grammarians from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, set out to simplify the language: Grammar rules were reduced from 212 to 112, and those governing commas dropped from 52 to a mere 9. The changes mainly addressed written grammar and have little effect on the spoken word.
So who cares, right? Kids! And journalists, who will pridefully refuse the changes until the current generation dissolves into unresolvable bitterness and drink. And finally, in undercurrent, the whole German nation, who understandably resent streamlining and usability adjustments that suggest their language is dying, secondary, baroque -- nothing positive, in short. Why do English, French, Russian -- Christ, Hungarian -- get to have all the fun?