Trend 5: The “Konjunktiv” is being used increasingly rarely to express indirect or reported speech
Nowadays, most Germans would not see any problem in the following sentence: „Der Vorsitzende der Gesellschaft hat mitgeteilt, dass er nicht plant, an der Versammlung teilzunehmen.“
This is somehow surprising, as the Duden, which is, in terms of authority, a combined Merriam-Webster, OED and Collins, is very prescriptive and insists on „Der Vorsitzende der Gesellschaft hat mitgeteilt, dass er nicht plane, an der Versammlung teilzunehmen.“ Now, as this sentence was included in recent German AoAs translated by us, where such “mistakes” must be avoided in any case, we clearly see that this rule is no longer complied with.
And I dare to predict that a young reader in 20 years’ time – if the Duden rule is followed and the Konunktiv is used in such a sentence – will simply ask wonder what they used the subjunctive for? Was the author trying to distance themselves from their statement?