The Spirit Realm

[quote="Hodur"]Do I have to present a fully-attributed research paper on every bit of common knowledge I discuss in threads now? I operate on the assumption that anybody participating in these discussions at least occasionally pays attention to the news.
[quote="Hodur"]

No but if the whole point of your post relys on a link that doesnt actually contain anything that your post is about its a bit pointless posting the link.

Bubba:
if you actually read the article you posted you would notice how it actually mentions that "ß" is still widely being used.
[quote= BubbasArticle]Thus, while the so-called "new rules" do reduce the use of the ß, they still leave intact the old bugaboo that means some German words are spelled with ß and others with ss.[/quote]

And your professor was quite simply wrong, unless he was talking about what is acceptable in, say, a casual email. I can tell you with absolute certainly that it is not acceptable to subsitute other characters for ß or ö or ä or the likes, just as it is not acceptable to substitute other letters for ê when writing in french. The spelling reforms have absolutely nothing to do with this as they do not eliminate ß and do not even touch ä, ö and ü.

Which post would that be?

As for me getting upset, I am simply trying to enlighten you to the fact that it is not in fact acceptable to substitute other letters for umlauts or ß in any kind of formal communication, no more than it is acceptable to use @ instead of at when writing a formal letter. I certainly would not dream of using ue instead of ü when, say, applying for a job. And neither would any of my relatives, friends or former teachers. From the couple of letters I briefly read earlier, neither would my bank, the local administration, my government or my employers (some of which are not based in Germany).

I am sure that some people do indeed use these substitutions. That does not mean you should too. The Duden (to which I posted a link to twice now) does not list any alternative spellings for these letters. And since it (the Duden) is the standard used by the german government I am afraid that it is indeed not proper to use ue instead of ü.

^ For the win!