Sometime in the mid-late 1990s, Germany decided to simplify its spelling, and get rid of some of the weirder perceived idiosyncracies. The official change came in August 1998, according to this informative article from german.about.com.

One of the most visible changes was cutting down on the use of the good old "sharp S" symbol, ß. No longer will so many foreigners to think that German for street was pronounced "strabe".

Several compound words were also split up into their component words. For this, the typesetters of the world thank you, for setting German in a narrow measure was always a challenge.

The change (I think; the input of a native German speaker would be appreciated) in hyphenation was interesting. One example is the ck formation would hyphenate to k-k, so the actual spelling of the word used to change.

I'd be very surprised if there weren't new TeX hyphenation dictionaries for German. TeX has a very large following in Germany. If it's not on CTAN, I'd be amazed.

Oh, and before people start corresponding with me in German, I don't have any. I might know how to typeset the language, I can sort-of read it, but replying is waaaay beyond me...

--
bowling trophy thieves, die!

The ß versus ss rule is actually my favourite new rule :). They sound the same, but the old rule used to be quite arbitrary. Actually, I think there was none -- you just had to learn by heart which word uses which spelling. But now, there is a clear rule for their use: In layman's (ie. non-linguist's) terms, ss is written after a short vowel, and ß is written after a long vowel. For an example of what I mean with "short" and "long" vowels, consider the ee/i in "deed" and "did". I find this rule really easy to use, and I like it because it eliminates a few exceptions to the rule that in German, things pronounced the same way are written the same way. (Compare that to English! *sigh*)

Some people don't get it and complain that they should have abolished ß at all. I don't agree. For example, we write "Masse" (mass) and "Maße" (dimensions). Without ß, there would be no way to differentiate.

Apart from that rule, there have been a number of very good and simplified new rule, and a number of very bad new rules. Most people have accepted the reform by now, but still have mixed feelings about it -- including me. I still feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, though.

Regarding Tex, there is a dictionary for the new spelling called "ngerman". Almost all German TeX users probably use it by now. I just don't know whether it will work with the module mentioned.

Wow. That was a perfectly proportional response to the question. I don't see how anybody could object to your "jumping in."

I really wish there were a chance that we could simplify English spellings. There was talk of that when I was young, but it feels like nobody is really behind the improvement. It's okay I guess, we are becoming an increasingly less literate society so it soon won't matter how we spell things.

N0 wut I m33n d00ds?

CYA