Standard German
[4] Regarding the spelling and punctuation, a recommended standard is published by the Council for German Orthography which represents the governments of all majority and minority German-speaking countries and dependencies.
[6] In Switzerland, no such official pronunciation codex exists, yet most Standard Swiss German speakers are markedly different sounding from Hanover-type phonetic targets.
Standard German originated not as a traditional dialect of a specific region but as a written language developed over a process of several hundred years in which writers tried to write in a way that was understood in the largest area.
[citation needed] Later in 1748, a grammar manual by Johann Christoph Gottsched, Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst, was key in the development of German writing and standardization of the language.
Similarly to Luther, Gottsched based his manual on the Central German variant of the Upper Saxon area.
[7] Over the course of the mid-18th century and onward, a written standard then began to emerge and be widely accepted in German-speaking areas, thus ending the period of Early New High German.
People in Northern Germany who spoke mainly Low Saxon dialects, which were very different from Standard German, learned it more or less as a foreign language.
These varieties of standard German differ above all in vocabulary, pragmatics and pronunciation, but in some instances also in grammar and, in only a handful of cases, in orthography.
The accent is documented in reference works such as Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch (German Pronunciation Dictionary) by Eva-Maria Krech et al.,[c] Duden 6 Das Aussprachewörterbuch (Duden volume 6, The Pronunciation Dictionary) by Max Mangold and the training materials at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting) and Deutschlandfunk (Radio Germany).
It is often said that the people of Hannover speak German with an accent that comes closest to the standard of the Duden dictionaries, but the claim is debatable, particularly since it may apply equally well to the rest of Northern Germany.
In addition to the 26 standard letters, German has three vowels with an umlaut mark, namely ä, ö and ü, as well as the Eszett or scharfes s (sharp s): ß.
In consequence, the written language of the chancery of Saxony-Wittenberg rose in importance in the course of the 17th century so much so that it was used in texts such as the 1665 revision of the Zürich Bible.
In response, the Ministers of Culture of the federal states in West Germany officially declared the Duden spellings to be binding as of November 1955 ("Duden-Monopol" or "Dudenmonopol", "Duden-Privileg" or "Dudenprivileg").
At one point, the dispute reached the highest court, which quickly dismissed it, claiming that the states had to decide for themselves and that only in schools could the reform be made the official rule – everybody else could continue writing as they had learned it.
After 10 years, without any intervention by the federal parliament, a major revision of the spelling reform was installed in 2006 because there were disagreements regarding capitalization and splitting of German words.
[citation needed] The most noticeable change was probably in the use of the letter ß, called scharfes s (Sharp S) or Eszett (pronounced ess-tsett, coming from ſz).
It is edited by a group of linguists under the authority of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture (German: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur).
The government-backed Goethe-Institut,[22] (named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) aims to enhance the knowledge of German culture and language within Europe and the rest of the world.
