> the obvious choice is "downloaded", but instead some people prefer the weird hodge-podge of "down-ge-loaded" You are using an English word in a German senten

> the obvious choice is "downloaded", but instead some people prefer the weird hodge-podge of "down-ge-loaded" You are using an English word in a German sentence, while they are (almost correctly, downgeloadet) applying the rules for words lended from foreign languages. So unless you are doing it for some particular effect, their sentence sounds funny, but is grammatically correct, yours only shows, that you know how to correctly speak English. Best examples of the same thing are the plurals of nouns ending in y: In a German sentence, the correct plural of Story (capital S) is actually Storys. This looks wrong to most Germans, too. So now you basically have to guess, whether you can impress your reader more with your advanced and wrong-looking German grammar knowledge, or whether you should play it safe and not risk to look like your English is rusty. Another great one are Deppenleerzeichen in English or English-German compounds, which basically no one gets right, even though the rule has no exceptions. Author of the article slipped one of those in, too.