29 ms·
Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
- theandrewbailey 2y ago> The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer’s apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an ‘s’ is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun (“a kilo of potato’s”). Grocer's apostrophes annoy me, along with words like "advices" (advice is an abstract noun and can't be plural, like "happiness") and "learnings" (use "lessons" instead).
- causi 2y agoIt's bizarre. I hate seeing it as well but if I don't pay attention I find myself typing them for no discernable reason.
- raverbashing 2y agoThere is no more misguided use of an apostrophe than to use it to "create a pronoun's possessive" as using "it's" in place of "its" Do you also write "he's" and "she's" (as possessive pronouns)? No? Then it's "its".
- robertlagrant 2y agoEr, yes because they're short for he is and she is. You mean "his" and "hers".
- raverbashing 2y agoBut you don't write them like that, you write "his/hers"
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoDifferent words. "His dog" means the dog belonging to him. "He's a dog" means "he is a dog".
- raverbashing 2y ago> Different words Obviously I meant people don't write "he's" as the possessive form of he. Hence they shouldn't write it's as the possessive form of it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mouse_ 2y agohe's/she's going to have to deal with it
- nozzlegear 2y agoOr even "it's going to have to deal with it" — though hopefully the pronoun refers to a pet or farm animal of some kind, as referring to a human as "it" is dehumanizing.
- ben_w 2y ago"He's got a head shaped like a massive orange" "Who?" "Xtk'act'sbu" "Oh no, not the Klingon cosplayer!"
- itronitron 2y agoSo is this the proper form? -> it's putting the lotion on its skin
- vundercind 2y agoCorporate English is a blight. So many ugly substitutions, overloading existing words, for perfectly good and common words we already have.
- mwigdahl 2y agoIt is my belief that you may not fully leverage the synergistic potential of the value-added verbosity inherent in corporate linguistics.
- daveslash 2y agoAgreed. It's very important to maximize cross-functional coherence to capitalize on strategic imperatives for maximal growth opportunities.
- sokoloff 2y agoUnless there’s a fulcrum involved, I don’t want to read the word “leverage”.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoThe fulcrum is externalities. Good ask, though!
- lxgr 2y agoLet's double-click on that: There's value in expensive signalling, and sometimes the expense is an intentional (or at least tolerated) lack of aesthetics.
- vundercind 2y agoWe should take this offline so we can really zoom in.
- Muromec 2y agoCorporate life is just really boring and this kind of nonsense is understood as fun by people engaging in it.
- okeuro49 2y ago"informations" is a good one for non-native English language speakers to look out for.
- pjot 2y agoAs is “codes” - I hear this often from non-native colleagues
- Spivak 2y agoThis one is honestly confusing. * Error codes — correct. * Their personal codes — correct. * Multiple codes of conduct — correct. And then computer code is used roughly like the noun 'writing' except you can say writings where appropriate.
- pjot 2y agoThe difference lies in how we conceptualize the noun: - Computer code is seen as a continuous substance or body of work, like "writing" or "music." - Other types of codes are seen as discrete units or systems. It's similar to how we say "information" (uncountable) but "facts" (countable), even though they're related concepts.
- jameshart 2y agoYes, code is a substance, like sand or iron. The system is built out of code (not codes), just like the table is built out of wood (not woods). Hearing someone talk about ‘codes’ has the same weird vibe as when they talk about ‘Legos’.
- Ekaros 2y agoSource codes of dependencies. Might be acceptable... Also why not pluralise all words? Sources codes.
- ben_w 2y agoWith regard to source code(s), I hear it exclusively from scientists, regardless of nationality. None of the coders I've worked with (and I'm in Berlin) have put the s on the end of code. Quite a few will use "he" to describe inanimate objects, though: "I spilled coffee on the table and now he is wet", that kind of thing. (This is still better than my German, which is embarassing given how long I've been here)
- zztop44 2y ago“Learnings” has a potentially useful nuance, referring specifically to whatever it is one took away from a lesson. I know the word “lesson” itself can also cover that meaning, but “learning” is more specific and given how widely it’s used, that specificity appears to be useful in some circumstances.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoThose plural forms are sometimes referred to as European continental dialect of English and do not raise questions here. If we, Europeans have to use English as lingua franca, we can and we will adapt it to our needs same way as Americans, Afro-Americans or Indians did. So my advice: just get used to it. Edit: cultural possession of language is nonsense, it belongs to all speakers, native and non-native alike. Germans must get used to foreign influence on their language too and Ukrainians should stop fighting Russian language and start writing their own rules for it (what can piss Moscow more?)
- Semaphor 2y agoI had never heard of that, but Wikipedia has similar examples in "Euro English" [0], though there it is because similar words exist with s in other languages. I wonder if something like "advices" exists in another language? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English#Inflection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English#Inflection
- hydrolox 2y agoI think you can say it does? Ie in other languages, the plural of advice (which in English is advice, "I gave him a lot of advice") is spelled differently(with the plural ending). From my personal knowledge, in Russian advice is совет and "advices" (or advice pl.) is советы. In Spanish, advice is consejo and there is a plural consejos. This can probably be also translated (in both cases) as "tip" and"tips" or something similar.
- Semaphor 2y agoYeah, but at least the examples wikipedia has, are for similar words, not just applying random other grammatical rules: informations (French) -> informations (English) compétences -> competences
- t0mas88 2y agoThe Dutch may have some "rights" to adapt English. They're #1 in non-native English proficiency for 5 years in a row and surpassed Canada (considered native speakers) on overall English proficiency some years ago. One point of debate is that English in the Netherlands has become mostly American English over the last decades due to media influence. While originally "school English" in the Netherlands was British English.
- njtransit 2y agoLearning can be the gerund form of the verb “to learn” and isn’t necessarily a noun referring to the abstract concept.
- praptak 2y ago"Learnings" is more than annoying corpspeak though. It's a word so old that you can find usage from time it was spelled "lernynges" ("lernynges whiche Cathon gaf to his sone") https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/118379/first-use-of-learnings https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/118379/first-use...
- drewcoo 2y agoI would normally expect "the grocer's apostrophe" to refer to a single grocer and "the grocers' apostrophe" to refer to a plural group of grocers, which I assume is what you intended.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoThe term "(green)grocer's apostrophe" refers to the misuse of the apostrophe in plurals, which seemingly occurs disproportionately on signs in those shops. It's ironic that it contains a tricky-to-place apostrophe. Should the meaning be "the apostrophe of the greengrocer" or should it be "the apostrophe that greengrocers misuse"? Either works fine. For the same reason, I always have to check whether it's "mother's day" or "mothers' day" because... it's both!
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoSimilar—and even more on-topic—I see a lot of non-first-language writers using "codes" in a similar way, to describe source code snippets.
- bee_rider 2y agoI’ve never heard “advices” (in the US). Maybe it is a continental Europe thing? They may have surpassed even us, at the art of inventing new words and spellings to annoy the English.
- cpwright 2y agoI've heard my wife say it that way because it is a plural in her native language.
- helpfulContrib 2y agoGerman is not that easy, either, though. Das/Der/Die is a constant source of frustration. Its never easy to remember.
- DrillShopper 2y agoWhen in doubt use das like half the population of Berlin.
- jeffbee 2y agoCan we get the other half to convert? Gendered articles are so annoying to remember, especially if you have to travel between German-speaking places that don't agree on all the noun genders. English speakers cannot be expected to understand this!
- chimeracoder 2y ago> Can we get the other half to convert? Gendered articles are so annoying to remember, especially if you have to travel between German-speaking places that don't agree on all the noun genders. English speakers cannot be expected to understand this! That's what Dutch did. As spoken in most of the Netherlands, Dutch "eliminated" grammatical gender... which is to say it now has two grammatical genders: "both" ("de") and "neither" ("het").
- inglor_cz 2y agoIt is doubly so if your native language is also a gendered one, but with different genders for common objects. It makes a mess in your head. CZ: ten nůž (masc.) - DE: das Messer (neutr.) - EN: knife CZ: ten svět (masc.) - DE: die Welt (fem.) - EN: world CZ: ta žába (fem.) - DE: der Frosch (masc.) - EN: frog Also, personified Death and rivers seem to be masculine-coded in Germanic languages, and feminine-coded in Slavic ones.
- Muromec 2y agoTo nobody's surprise ніж, світ, жаба have exactly right genders so it's Germans who are confused.
- ttyprintk 2y agoIf the cost of this is to look utterly stupid, who in Germany would sincerely coddle a small number of English-first obsessives? Is the story here that Germans feel better about taking a stand when they’re told they have a choice?
- mattmaroon 2y agoIn America an idiot’s apostrophe is when someone uses it to pluralize words and it too seems to be growing in use.
- Tepix 2y agoIn dutch, it's not even a mistake for certain words ending with vowels. For example "Photo's".
- waterproof 2y agoIn the article they call that the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” as in “twelve potato’s”.
- itronitron 2y agoI don't know that I have ever seen that in the wild, but probably only because I refuse to accept that it exists.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoI believe the term originated here in the UK, where it's actually pretty common. Although, ironically, greengrocers aren't so much anymore.
- automatic6131 2y agoIf you could of seen some of the spelling mistakes I of, you would of run away screaming, and there's nothing else you should of done.
- mckirk 2y agoI literally could care less. If people cant handle this alternative way of communicating, thats there problem.
- names_are_hard 2y ago
- impish9208 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jsnell 2y agoBy the site guidelines, a small number of duplicate submissions are fine if the initial post didn't get any significant attention. That's clearly the case here.
- impish9208 2y agoBut what about my karma and bragging rights? :)
- mattferderer 2y agoMade me think of this old joke that's been on HackerNews, Reddit, etc for years: The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas. --- source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/leq19j/english_to_become_the_official_european_language/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/leq19j/english_to_be...
- Semaphor 2y agoAs a German, I must say this is very well done. It went from clear English, over me having to think about every word, to clear English again (though only if I read it out loud)
- vundercind 2y agoReads like Mark Twain’s short piece “A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling” https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.html https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.html [edit] Maybe Twain, anyway. The attribution is dubious, but common.
- randomtoast 2y ago‘If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it.’ - The Crown of Life (1896)
- bagels 2y agoThe signs are in English, why does it matter how they would be written in German?
- lxgr 2y agoHow so? "Harald's Eck" (one of the examples from the article) doesn't sound very English to me.
- bagels 2y agoThe first two given are "Rossi's Bar" and "Kati's Kiosk" which are perfectly reasonable English names for places, but it turns out that Bar and Kiosk are also perfectly fine words in German too. How about that.
- patrickmcnamara 2y agoThe signs are not in English.
- maxnoe 2y agoHow is Blumenladen English?
- alex_john_m 2y agoI say the EU should adopt the Romanian language. It's spoken the same way as it is written. That should solve all spelling problems forever. :)))
- rafram 2y agoNo natural language is actually 100% phonetic. Romanian is no exception. Romanian spelling and pronunciation are close to phonetic, but the same is true of German.
- badmintonbaseba 2y agoHungarian gets pretty close too, but yeah, there are exceptions.
- int_19h 2y agoAmong European languages, Serbo-Croatian is probably the closest to phonemic spelling. An interesting way to test this is to train a basic language model on a representative language, and then see how many mistakes it makes on words it doesn't know (https://aclanthology.org/2021.sigtyp-1.1/ https://aclanthology.org/2021.sigtyp-1.1/) - in this study, Serbo-Croatian scored over 99% for both reading and writing accuracy. Finnish and Turkish are also pretty good.
- Tainnor 2y agoA writing system being phonetic would be impractical, because most languages have tons of little phonetic alterations of individual sounds depending on position in the word/syllable, regional variation, etc. What you usually want is that the writing system be phonemic, i.e. that there is a 1:1 correspondence between phonemes (meaningfully distinctive sound units) and characters. Unfortunately, languages evolve, so even if your writing systems starts out as more or less phonemic, over time the sounds of the language will drift and inertia will usually keep the writing system not fully in sync with these changes. This is particularly bad in the case of English, where there's never been a proper spelling reform accounting for the corresponding sound changes.
- mglz 2y agoPeople get upset about this while you encounter statements like "life your live" regularly, sometimes even on TV.
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoWhat they need is learn from Canada and have a language police. Go around and fine business that don't follow the rules of German properly.
- forinti 2y agoYou can bet old German ladies already point out people's mistakes.
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoDo they go around threatening fines and suspension of their business license?
- School-Cotton 2y agoNothing like what you described exists in Canada. You are presumably referring to the OQLF (a provincial institution, not a “Canadian” one) which enforces French as the dominant public language in Quebec. Given that Quebec, despite being surrounded by the Anglosphere, hasn’t ended up like Louisiana or Ireland where French or Irish as the primary native language is a distant memory, suggests that their efforts are successful.
- int_19h 2y agoIt is rather telling that Quebec had to repeatedly to use the "notwithstanding clause" of the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms (which is basically a legal way for the province of saying "fuck you, we don't care about your pesky rights") to do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms#Uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
- School-Cotton 2y agoIt’s also worth pointing out that Quebec was conquered by military force, has never agreed to be bound by the Canadian constitution, and follows it under duress. Indeed they may be violating something that the Canadian constitution — a document they never agreed to — describes as a “right”. On the other hand, on the scale of human rights, the right of business owners to publicly display English-only signs is a rather weak one and reasonable people could debate whether it’s fundamental and inalienable.
- psychoslave 2y agoHaving French as mother tongue, I always find fascinating when the French and German official bodies go postal about such a topic. It’s like looking some parents complaining of the retro-influence of some common bastard children. :P Now, there are languages for which Globish can be part of an existential threat, but German and French are nowhere close to this. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_languages There are also a measurable economical issues for non-English-native nations to have to use the de facto lingua-franca of the day that is English. Of course neither German nor French would be a better alternative as a global international neutral language. To my knowledge, the only proposal that gained some modest but significant results on that side over the last century is Esperanto. You know, the language against which France has put its veto has it was proposed as language of communication in League of Nations (1920s) or UNESCO (1954) and still is unhelpful with its adoption in United Nations. Fun fact, Germany has a city where street names and many other things are translated in Esperanto: https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/movado/la-esperanto-urbo-r365/ https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/movado/la-esperanto-urbo-r3...
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoEnglish being an amalgamated language and thus uniquely flexible is part of its power. We have options in style choices many languages formally don’t permit, e.g. when to italicise or, if quoting, whether to “exclude punctuation”, or “include it.” (As well as comma use.) As a fellow French speaker, I think these are strengths other languages could gain from. Couriel or email (or e-mail)? Speaker’s choice. Same for possession. (Particularly for a culture with a tradition of individual liberty like France.)
- dqv 2y agoJust this morning I came across a guy called Mr Techpedia on YouTube and I was really surprised because I heard a lot of English phrases but also phrases that are in a different language or a dialect of English I’m not familiar with. It was actually really cool. It also reminds me of a time when I heard someone codeswitch from US Midwestern English to Malaysian English - there was a clear difference in word choice and pronunciation. Global/Internet English as a concept is really cool as well. I often (accidentally) adopt grammatical constructions from Global English that I believe come from that particular speaker’s native tongue. Anyway, yeah, I love this sort of mixing of languages and I’m glad a lot of cultures are more open about mixing in English.
- nomilk 2y agoI knew of a building named Water's Edge, but spelled "Waters Edge". The absence of a possessive apostrophe was bothersome but I realised there's a case for sacrificing correctness for things like ease of communication and how the words look. An insight from Oscar Wilde: > Mr. Noel, in one of his essays, speaks with much severity of those who prefer sound to sense in poetry. No doubt, this is a very wicked thing to do. But he himself is guilty of a much graver sin against art when, in his desire to emphasise the meaning of Chatterton, he destroys Chatterton's music. In the modernised version he provides of the wonderful Songe to Ælla, he mars the poem's metrical beauty with his corrections, ruins the rhymes, and robs the music of its echo. [1] (^^ that's from a short but wonderful essay, worth reading!) [1] https://ia800203.us.archive.org/23/items/collectedworksau12wilduoft/collectedworksau12wilduoft.pdf#page=134 https://ia800203.us.archive.org/23/items/collectedworksau12w...
- mattlondon 2y agoBut Waters Edge is totally fine if they mean "by the edge of the waters" and not "the edge belongs to the water". But hey, there are no rules or logic in English so have at it!
- nomilk 2y agoI think I understand: I thought about trees: Tree leaves (leaves from a tree) Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree) Same logic for water: Water edge (an edge that happens to be of a body of water) Waters edge (same but of more than one body of water)
- f33d5173 2y agoIn tree leaves, it could be leaves from a single tree or multiple trees. Hence, you can't pluralize tree into trees leaves, tree isn't allowed to recieve a plural there. If you write it as tree's leaves, then tree is singular, and the form is possessive (whereas before it served to disambiguate from, say, leaves of a book). Then you can also pluralize tree to trees' leaves, and now it's leaves from multiple trees.
- gerikson 2y agoWe see these in Swedish too and they're just as incorrect, grammatically. But the worst thing is usually the acute accent is used instead of a real apostrophe, which just makes it stand out even more.
- aejfghalsgjbae 2y agoYou get that a lot in Germany and the grave accent too, as with "Rosi`s" in the article image. I guess the acute accent is laziness because unlike the apostrophe, it doesn't need the shift key on a standard German keyboard layout. The grave accent is at shift+´ so just weird.
- glitchc 2y agoMeanwhile in English we have our own apostrophe catastrophe where it's become commonplace online to add one to a plural.
- FireBeyond 2y agoOr the Americanism of double quotes for emphasis: > Bob's "Big" Bookstore!
- morsch 2y agoAlso quite common in Germany. I choose to interpret them as scare quotes implying irony and smile to myself at Bob's "Big" Bookstore and the grocer selling "fresh" fish.
- bee_rider 2y agoI’ve always read those as scare-quotes, like the store is making fun of itself in some self-aware fashion for not being big. I know I am wrong but I would rather be wrong is a slightly funnier and less stupid world.
- pfdietz 2y agoIs that for emphasis, or is that to cast doubt on the word?
- g-b-r 2y agoIs that really common?
- kristjansson 2y agoEven worse with food. > Bob's "Best" Burgers what's wrong with the burgers??
- almostnormal 2y agoSpeaking of the English language influencing German, I want my Erdbeermarmelade back. I don't care that english marmalde cannot be made of strawberries.
- greenicon 2y agoIt seems the EU laws for this have changed last year [1], to allow Erdbeermarmelade again. 1: I was only able to find something in German: https://www.wiwo.de/politik/ausland/realsatire-aus-bruessel-marmelade-darf-wieder-so-heissen-buerokratiewahn-auf-dem-fruehstueckstisch/29554032.html https://www.wiwo.de/politik/ausland/realsatire-aus-bruessel-...
- zelphirkalt 2y agoPhew, that was close. What would we do without our Erdbeermarmelade.
- yamazakiwi 2y agoWhy would you not be able to make it out of Strawberries? You can make Marmalade with any fruit. :)
- xandrius 2y agoGenerally marmalade is made out of citrus fruits.
- yamazakiwi 2y agoOf course but it doesn't have to be. There are tons of fruits that make great tasting marmalades. After watching the Mexican episode of British Bake Off I don't care about their opinions on food authenticity.
- xandrius 2y agoIt's not about authenticity, if it is not made out of citrus fruits it's generally called a jam.
- OptionOfT 2y agoAustria and German-speaking Switzerland, lists “Eva’s Blumenladen” (Eva’s Flower Shop) and “Peter’s Taverne” (Peter’s Tavern) as usable alternatives, though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect. Why is 'Eva's Brille incorrect', but 'Eva's Blumenladen' ok?
- colanderman 2y agoThe former are names of businesses, the latter is just referring to someone's personal item. (This confused the heck out of me at first too.)
- aeyes 2y agoBut I can style the name of my business however I want, "E'v'a's Blumenladen" is correct because I say so. I don't need anyones approval.
- carlmr 2y agoIn Germany you need approval for business names.
- carlosjobim 2y agoDo you really? In other European countries you only need approval for your company name, but are free to use any business name(s) you prefer, as long as they're not trademarked.
- maxnoe 2y agoBecause, according to the new rule, it's only permitted in proper names "Eva's Blumenladen" is the proper name of the shop, what is put on the sign above the door. "Evas Brille" is just Eva's glasses.
- OptionOfT 2y agoOh shoot, I read it as Eva's Glasses, the name of her eyewear shop.
- croes 2y agoThat's like changing the spelling of Espresso to Expresso
- deng 2y agoIt's not, unless you are able to hear a difference between "Tea's Buchladen" and "Teas Buchladen".
- croes 2y agoIt is because it's just giving in to the habit of some people.
- deng 2y agoSo I suppose you never gave in and you still vehemently write "bureau" instead of "Büro"? It's just spelling. Also, please check your old Duden, Regel 16b, you will be surprised.
- croes 2y agoBüro is the German spelling of a foreign word. But Eva's Blumenladen is a foreign spelling of German words.
- int_19h 2y agoThere's an obvious upside for those people. Is there any obvious downside for everyone else?
- croes 2y agoThe downside is you don't know if Eva's Blumenladen is wrong or correct spelling, because only as a name it's correct. That creates additional confusion for learners Additionally the spelling with an apostrophe needs more space therefore more material to print and print onto. A waste of resources. It's like the Deppen-Bindestrich and ruins the compactness of German spelling. Maybe english should adapt body back for backpack in exchange.
- subpixel 2y agoI lived in Germany on two occasions and regularly consume German media. English words are all over the German vernacular, to the point that it's really, really annoying.
- guitarbill 2y agoIt's pretty crazy how quickly it happened/happens. The Deppenapostroph is maybe less problematic; I see it more as a simplification just like the dative replacing the genitive. But Denglish really just makes everything harder to understand; even if you are fluent in both English and German the "switching" is tiresome. Still, maybe we should get rid of "handy" and "beamer" first... Ironically, even British English has the issue of Americanisms sneaking in, see e.g. the IT Crowd episode: "How hard is it to remember 911?" "You mean 999? That's the American one".
- pjmlp 2y agoAs someone living here for the last 20 years, and also nowadays understands a bit of dialects and related slag, it is kind of curious the amount of Denglish words among the youth. For example, "Hast Du das geprüft?" quickly turns into "Hast du das gecheckt?".
- guitarbill 2y agoHuh, "Hast du das gechecked?" used to mean "Hast du das kapiert?", with a quite negative connotation.
- pjmlp 2y agoDepends on the context, at least based on my experience from 1live and Cosmo interviews, and some TV series.
- zolbrek 2y agoI usually find it amusing. „Was meinst, kriegen wir das hin?“ „Safe Digga, das ist so was von easy.“ And they think they're so cool talking like that. The part that irritates me though is when I try to pronounce Denglish stuff with a German accent and the Germans end up not understanding me. I made a joke about strippers once and got only blank looks, then one guy said, "oh, you mean strippers," pronouncing it the way you'd say it in English as best as he could. I had pronounced it schtrippas.
- thomastjeffery 2y agoFor an article about linguistics, that title sure is hard to read.
- subpixel 2y agoJust wait until they get ahold of the quotation marks: https://www.reddit.com/r/suspiciousquotes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/suspiciousquotes/
- ExoticPearTree 2y agoOh no... anyway. Seriously, who cares that some organizational body in Germany has an issue with the English language? :)
- deng 2y agoHere, too? As the articles notes, this kind of apostrophe has been "correct" for many, many years, at least for names, and no, not just for avoiding confusion with names ending in 's'. The "Duden" (one of the officially recognized authorities for German spelling) has had the example "Willi's Würstchenbude" for many years, despite "Willis" not being a common name in Germany. Now that one tries to simplify things, the Cliff Clavins of Germany freak out because they lose one example where they could feel smarter than others. There really is nothing to see here.
- cs702 2y agoReading this, I come away with the impression that European languages today are evolving due to the influence of "Vulgar English" (the lowest common denominator of English spoken by the most people worldwide), analogously to how Romance languages like Spanish and French evolved in the past due to the influence of "Vulgar Latin."[a] --- [a] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Romance-languages https://www.britannica.com/topic/Romance-languages
- adamc 2y agoLanguages change. I'm always amused that we get upset by that, but it's going to keep happening.
- pjmlp 2y agoYou forgot the part when it was cool to speak French among higher classes, and thus it got spread into many European languages as well.
- xdennis 2y ago> Romance languages [...] evolved in the past due to the influence of "Vulgar Latin." Minor correction: they are derived, not influenced by Vulgar Latin. That's why so many words are different from Classical Latin, but similar between Romance languages. Like how Latin for house is "domus", but Romance languages use casa/casă/chez because common people referred to their house by the word "casa".
- wrzuteczka 2y agoWeird twist: Slavic languages use words very similar to "domus" for "house", for example, "dom" in Polish or "дом" in Ukrainian.
- mlinksva 2y agoMaybe English/Globish should go in the opposite direction. Apostrophes, at least for the genitive case, are awfully annoying: curly/non-curly, extra character, not pronounced, uncouth... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Criticism
- pie420 2y agowe should always tend to having more literary devices and punctuation with which we can express ourselves. if you dont like it dont use it broski
- lovecg 2y agoOh well, at least we don’t need help highlighting every noun in a sentence.
- jjk166 2y agoReminds me of the story: > A Pan Am 727 flight, waiting for start clearance in Munich, overheard the following: > Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?" > Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English." > Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?" > Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): "Because you lost the bloody war"
- ktosobcy 2y agoAs a Pole I'm also fairly annoyed by having to use English daily ;)
- phkahler 2y agoIn the air traffic example it's required so everyone on the radio can understand everything going on around them.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- falcor84 2y agoI might regret saying it, but I think we as humanity should go back to wars being definitively won, rather than dragging on indefinitely. It's obviously a poor metaphor, but I'm thinking of something like the "Fifty-move rule" in chess - e.g. if no significant area changed sides in e.g. 100 days, then we officially redraw the maps (by treaty if possible), cease hostilities and let people rebuild and get on with their lives.
- mattlondon 2y ago"idiot's apostrophe" or to call it another way "how the English speakers do it" is quite offensive to a native English speaker! Thanks Germany.
- cafard 2y agoGiven the long and deplorable influence of German on American scholarly prose, this inspires only Schadenfreude. I'm not singling out the Germans, mind you. I smirk also when the French complain of American modes of thought polluting their schools: when municipal bureaucrats let contracts not for demolition but for deconstruction, I say that we have injuries to avenge.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hyggetrold 2y agoI'm a little about myself that I understood this plus the deep cuts. Well done.
- orwin 2y ago'deconstruction' in the French theory was only use by Derrida as a mean to critique a literary work. What it means is that you only judge the works by itself. You should not judge it by the standards of the time you read it, nor by the standard of the time it was written, nor by its author life. You judge it by its internal contradictions, its hypocrisy. Your external knowledge should have no impact on how you judge the quality of literary works. How to do that? You find contradictions, and that's what deconstruction is, a mean to find internal contradictions. How deconstruction is pollution in your mind? Please, tell me. I'll tell you what happened. People don't read, they parrot idiotic beliefs they heard/read from other idiots who didn't grasp it in the first place, in order to singe knowledge or competency they don't have. It's American scholars who used deconstruction to mean something other than Derrida's definition, and north American idiots who conflated the two, then podcasted their beliefs without reading the man once, and expended their idiocy to other, gullible people who can't read themselves (not their fault, when you work a straining job I understand reading Derrida isn't your priority).
- cafard 2y agoI did not say that deconstruction was pollution. I do think that many of a generation of American scholars found it hard to write or think other than in terms worked out in Paris between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s. I used the word "polluting" in referring to American thought as influencing French, and that perhaps was a little strong. What I had in mind is mentioned for example in https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59584125 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59584125.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoBackground: In German you would not add an " ' " when you want to express something belonging to something. You would simply add an "s" in most cases. Example: "Marias books are at home.", not "Maria's books are at home."
- pjmlp 2y agoIt is actually explained in the article, with mention to Barbaras Rhabarberbar.
- oniony 2y agoI read somewhere that the apostrophe in English was only used to show elision, but that in Old English the genitive form changed the word ending to 'es', so the apostrophe was just indicating the 'e' had been removed. For example 'hund' (dog) becomes "hundes" in the genitive form and was written "hund's" when the 'e' was elided.
- em-bee 2y agothat's an interesting theory. it would go along with the contraction of not like in don't and also in is like in that's. is there any other non-foreign use of ' that is not such a replacement?
- pjmlp 2y agoExtra points for the Barbaras Rhabarberbar mention.
- Tainnor 2y agoWhile I personally dislike this for "aesthetic" reasons, I do recognise that languages change and that's fine. It used to be that very few people would read and write, but with the advent of the internet, text messaging, etc., written language is also evolving more "democratically", similar to spoken language. There are also technological forces at work: I've mostly given up on writing compound words the proper way on mobile phones, because it just doesn't work well with autocompletion, for example. That said, I really dislike how "bureaucratic" German spelling rules are, including this recent addition. Instead of blanket allowing the use of an apostrophe for the genitive (at least for personal names), the new rule allows it only in very specific circumstances. I'm of the opinion that nobody should have to consult a complicated rulebook in order to write well (in fact, the best way is to just simply read a lot and then mimic what you read). Then again, most people don't need to care about what is or isn't considered proper spelling. In theory it should matter for official documents etc., but that doesn't mean that those never contain errors (quite the contrary, in my experience).
- carlmr 2y ago>the new rule allows it only in very specific circumstances. I'm of the opinion that nobody should have to consult a complicated rulebook in order to write well Exactly. If you ask me it kind of makes sense to have it for possesive (not plural) use anyway. It clarifies that the s is not part of the name but serves a different function.
- asimpletune 2y agoEnglish had been so heavily influenced by European languages that it’s just a funny coincidence that we’re alive to see the opposite happening. It feels like half (or more) of Italian words have English cognates or they’re so close you could consider them a slant cognate. Another thing is that what happened in the article is something that has occurred a lot in English too. I think a few years back they permitted “myriad of” just because it was so common a mistake. This happened even though myriad is supposed to be used exactly like the words “numerous” or “many” and shouldn’t be followed by an “of”. Still, despite having simple examples of similar words, like numerous, people just couldn’t stop saying “myriad of”. I see it all the time now. I wouldn’t say I love the change, but I don’t get upset about it or correct people, since it’s technically perfectly alright now, even if it’s accepted for sort of a sad reason.
- everforward 2y agoI believe using "of" is correct when using "myriad" as a noun, the same as "many" or "number" (the noun form of numerous). "He had a great number of seashells", "she possessed a myriad of skills". Apparently it used to/still means 10,000 so it should be usable anywhere 10,000 is. "There were a myriad of them"/"there were 10,000 of them".
- asimpletune 2y agoO that’s funny. Apparently it was originally a noun, hundreds of years ago. It actually changed into the adjectival use I was referring to earlier in the 1800s. If anything it seems that using myriad as an adjective was actually an example of a rule change made to accommodate how people were speaking at the time.
- everforward 2y agoLanguage is certainly a fascinating thing. The adjective form of "legion" always throws me off, like in the Anonymous slogan ("we are legion"). Off topic, but now I do kind of wish the Magic: The Gathering mechanic was named "Legion" instead of "Myriad".
- lagniappe 2y agoAlso, another common one I see more these days is "it's" where it should be "its". If you can not substitute a usage of "it's" for "it has", "it was", or "it is", then you meant to say "its". It is hard to even be angry about it, I think the language should be changed so that any instances of "its" -> "it's" to eliminate the exception.
- cdrini 2y agoStrong agree. As a kid, I remember I'd have to pause for like 5s every time I wrote "it's" or "its" to try to remember what was correct. And it doesn't help that what I'd usually remember is "well apostrophe s denotes possession usually, so surely apostrophe s denotes possession here as well". But alas not. I think always having the apostrophe makes way more sense. (Nowadays I just don't double check it and it's basically a cointoss if I get it right or not :P)
- bitwize 2y agoSay that you have i-t followed by apostrophe s, now what does that mean? You would not use "it's" in this case! As a possessive It's a contraction What's a contraction? Well, it's the shortening of a word or group of words by omission of a sound or letter. -- "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Word Crimes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
- Supernaut 2y agoIn certain academic circles, it's been popular for several decades now to exhibit indifference to the general decline in observance of rules such as this. I find that attitude very regrettable. I can't be the only person who has found themselves having to repeatedly re-read a passage of text to discern its meaning, because the author is ignorant of, or indifferent to the use of apostrophes and/or other forms of punctuation. These aren't arbitrary rules, for the most part: they came into existence to assist with reading comprehension. The clarity of expression afforded by modern English is a great gift, and I strongly believe that allowing it to degenerate by abandoning these (very simple!) rules will serve only to make written English less expressive and more opaque.
- pflenker 2y agoI approve this as it acknowledges the fact that language is not static. Next up, in my opinion, will be the _Deppenleerzeichen_, the idiot space, between two nouns. This space has rapidly gained in usage thanks to auto correct - it’s easier to use auto correct if you add a space after every noun. Given how the apostrophe thing is received I expect no less than riots and burning tires in the streets once that one is officially allowed.
- Tabular-Iceberg 2y agoFine, but using a ` or ‘ instead of a ' or ’ should be an arrestable offense.
- Tepix 2y agoIt's not fine. It's still a disgrace. But i agree, using accents or backticks is so much worse!
- blackbear_ 2y agoDon't get me started on — versus – versus - !
- allemagne 2y agoThis makes me really curious how quickly German has actually evolved over time. My assumptions would be entirely informed from extrapolating from historical context and not knowing anything about German. So there was probably a lot of linguistic diversity before unification in 1870, then there would have been a standardization effort started by Bismarck (favoring the dialect predominantly spoken in Prussia) which would carry through WW1, would be relaxed during the Weimar republic, would intensify (or turn into something bizarre and Orwellian) in the Nazi era, and then a slight divergence between East and West Germany in the Cold War. Under this, my rough hypothesis would be that German has actually changed a lot less in the post-WW2 era, especially since the 90s, than it would have in the period before. Is this roughly how things shook out? I'd be really interested where this is completely wrong.
- leipert 2y agoOh, big official orthographic reforms happened in 1944 and then in 1996. So that happened in the 90s, and a few minor revisions after that. A lot of English vocabulary (technology but also every day life) had an influence on German, especially in Eastern Germany post-reunion. An example: Most people born after 1990 probably invite you to a Geburtstagsparty instead of a Geburtstagsfeier. Compared to the after-war generations, hyper-local dialects probably faded out as bit as well. If I talk to people from my grandparents generation, there were sometimes difference in terms even though people just lived a few villages apart. Biggest development I am happy about, is that the capital ẞ is probably becoming official during my life time.
- Wytwwww 2y ago> favoring the dialect predominantly spoken in Prussia Was it though? Historically Low German was spoken in Brandenburg (and the rest of pre 1800s Kingdom of Prussia). Standard German is a High German language closely related to the dialects in Saxony/Thuringia etc. (thanks to Luther) and predates Prussia's status as a major German power by a few centuries or so. Paradoxically in the 1600s and 1700s Prussia invested a lot of effort into replacing in replacing its local dialects with Standard German (which by modern standards was effectively an entirely foreign language to most people living there. I think technically even Dutch/Flemish might be closer to Standard German than Eastern Low German was). Austrians, Bavarians etc. didn't really need to do the same since it was already much easier for them to 'learn' Standard German if they needed to (and of course its association with Protestantism played a role initially) It's a bit like if Scotland replaced Scots with Shakespearean English, then proceeded to takeover the rest of Britain and moved its capital to Edinburgh.
- rob74 2y ago> The new edition of the Council for German Orthography’s style guide [...] lists “Eva’s Blumenladen” (Eva’s Flower Shop) and “Peter’s Taverne” (Peter’s Tavern) as usable alternatives, though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect. So they didn't actually simplify it - they made it more complicated? But my single largest pet peeve with the original reform is that they "outlawed" the use of the English plural form for loan words like "Party". In German, you are now supposed to write "Partys", "Parties" is incorrect. Bet they didn't change that... or did they?
- ars 2y agoCan you explain what's different about Glasses vs Tavern, where it's allowed in one and not the other?
- Wytwwww 2y agoSupposedly names of businesses and/or public signs are required to comply with certain rules? Which isn't surprising considering the love Germans have for pointless bureaucracy... So I guess this is some sort of a (certainly not arbitrary) compromise to appease both sides.
- em-bee 2y agoonce a word is integrated in german, using german grammar rules seems perfectly fine. but if i read "parties" im a german sentence, i would feel surprised however there are also plenty of counterexamples especially on the plural of foreign words, especially from latin, where a latin plural is expected. what this suggests to me is that singular and plural have to be integrated separately. "party" is essentially already a german word. "parties" isn't (yet) "party" distinguishes itself from "feier" because the later means "celebration", where as "party" in german can be used for parties that don't celebrate anything.
- cdumler 2y agoBeing an old, grey beard, it's been interesting to see language change in my lifetime. Things I learned: * Third-person singular indefinite ("he or she") can be replaced with third-person plural ("they"). Of course, a lot of changes around recognizing gender. * Final punctuation within the quote at the end of sentence (Did you just say "what?") can be placed after the final quote if the quote is for a literal string (ie, The password is "123456".) * Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.") * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up"). * Double infinitives ("to try to eat") getting changed to an infinitive and conjunction ("to try and eat"). One thing I am very said about is just how lack luster both of my kid's hand writing is. My eldest is in high-school and her hand writing is horrible. Partly because she has little use for long-form writing (forget cursive) and because they rely on the spell checker.
- mostlysimilar 2y ago> * Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.") > * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up"). Resist! Google is trying to get you to stop Googling things, but we don't have to listen to the corporate overlords.
- nmeofthestate 2y agoI think organisations (companies, teams) being singular/plural differs depending on what country you're in, so perhaps this is a bleeding across of conventions due to globalisation.
- jasonpeacock 2y agoSingular "they" has been around for a very long time, and used naturally without anyone noticing it as unusual, until recently when there's been more gender discussion and people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- cdrini 2y agoI love to see language evolve like this! Dictionaries and grammar rules are not prescriptive, they follow what/how people speak, not the other way around. They do influence in the opposite direction as well, as a bit of a normalizing/consolidating force. I feel like for the last few decades (at least) we've treated dictionaries like gospel, with very strict, almost mathematical definitions of "correct". I think giving a bit of freedom to allow new words/etc to develop naturally, like they have since the dawn of human language, is quite nice! I.e. Make fetch happen!
- ghayes 2y agoJust to clarify, I think you have the terms reversed. Descriptivism is, as you say, describing a language from its everyday usage. Prescriptivism is when you follow a rules body or dictionary to say what is “correct.”
- cdrini 2y agoDarn thank you for the correction! I forgot a "not" in there. Fixed!
- sigmoid10 2y agotru dat! Language be evolvin like craZy n we shuld just roll wit it! Dictiunarys try to tell us wut 2 do but we aint gotta lissen! Its lyk, who needz rulez when we can make up wordz as we go, amirite? Letz just keep makin fetch happen!!!
- cdrini 2y agoHahaha within reason!! I want to see eg authors just introduce new words in books, like Shakespeare. New words shouldn't generally make the language less internally consistent (goodness knows English has enough of a problem with that as it is!). I mean new words like... "He was a carrapticious old fellow. Always alert, and, despite his old age, had the mischievous sparkling eyes of a boy who has just told a bad joke".
- 2y ago
- rootusrootus 2y agoHa, from the picture in the article I thought they were talking specifically about the backtick as an apostrophe. I could totally call that the idiot's apostrophe, but in a completely different context than what the Germans are talking about.
- qwertox 2y ago> [...] though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect. Where would be the fun if there's no exception to the rule in the German language.
- Etheryte 2y agoIt's like German humor, it's no laughing matter.
- wolframhempel 2y agoI feel that most people instinctively assume that some institution, e.g. the government or the dictionary publishers are the authority on what constitutes "correct language". It's important to emphasize that language (included spelling) is something that develops organically and that the role of these institutions is just to capture the status quo. At least that should be the case in free societies. Language is power - and controlling it is an important aspect of exercising control.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y agoIndeed, dictionaries and governments are just writing down what's already happening in the language. In a way language is one of the only truly democratic institutions. We all vote for new words and new pronunciations by using them or not using them. The collective action of all these choices is the language.
- duped 2y agoThat's not always accurate, many of these government bodies fight the evolution of the vernacular and suppress dialects or loanwords.
- metaphor 2y agoThis. For example, in the Mariana Islands, there are two independent othography committees that have been low-key duking it out over an indigenous language with less than 50k native speakers; see these brief highlights[1; p. 11 onward] from a recognized scholar of the language for a small sampling. In the CNMI, the language is routinely spoken (i.e. English is a second language in most households) and the CNMI's othography committee has taken a conservative approach, focusing on simple written rules that capture sound as spoken, and biasing its orthography towards serving as an optimal language preservation mechanism...which makes objective sense given its target population is overwhelmingly fluent. In Guam, however, the spoken language was nearing generational extinction largely driven by American colonial influence not dissimilar to the going concern of native Hawaiians. Ironically, Guam's better funded orthography committee has taken a much more liberal approach in establishing new written rules and spellings (e.g. CHamoru is the official spelling of the language/people written into law as of 2017; yes, the letter CH is now entirely capitalized in a proper noun; previously Chamoru, as opposed to the prevailing and historically consistent Chamorro in the CNMI). There's also been a recent resurgence of language adoption by the native youth cohort on Guam largely motivated by grassroots sociopolitical identity movement. This hipster generation has taken it upon themselves to replace an ever growing number of established words adopted during colonial rule hundreds of years ago with all but forgotten words of the ancient tongue...which I suppose is fair game as language evolution goes, but it's gotten to a point of irony where these changes are throwing off the elder native-speaking generation responsible for passing on the language to their progeny, e.g. family (English) --> familia (Spanish adopted) --> manggåfa (antiquated is the new hip). In contrast, no such shift in zeitgeist is happening in the CNMI. [1] https://people.ucsc.edu/~schung/orthog_differences.pdf#page=11 https://people.ucsc.edu/~schung/orthog_differences.pdf#page=...
- surfingdino 2y agoIt won't make German jokes any funnier.
- btbuildem 2y agoHa. "greengrocer’s apostrophe" is a very polite way of referring to those who put an apostrophe before every trailing "s".
- mppm 2y agoFor those interested, I highly recommend "The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher, in which he describes how languages evolve over time, to the great annoyance of purists, but without either losing or gaining sophistication in the long run. It's a very entertaining read and has considerably reduced my irritation at "incorrect" use of language.
- __loam 2y agoOn top of this I recommend languagejones on YouTube. He's a linguistics PhD that gets into things like how African American Vernacular English is actually more complex than regular English, intentionally obfuscated from white English, and has fast moving slang to stay ahead of adoption of the slang into the wider culture. It's pretty fascinating stuff and he does a lot to show how thinking some of this stuff is incorrect is actually just ignorance.
- sltkr 2y agoFor extra irony in this context: Deutscher means German in German.
- crazygringo 2y agoThe article doesn't mention it, but am I right in assuming this basically comes from McDonald's? There are a lot of places around the world that copy the "'s" where it doesn't exist natively, but only for restaurant names or similar -- like "Bob's" is the McDonald's clone in Brazil [1]. I'm mostly curious whether "Rosi's" and "Kati's" in the article are seen by Germans as intentionally trying to look "foreign", rather than the apostrophe "invading" German. Like, if I go to a Sausage Haus, I'm not exactly worrying about "Haus" creeping into English to replace "House". Nor would I ever call it the "idiot's house" because that would be crazy insulting and perjorative. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s
- eleveriven 2y agoYou're onto something interesting here! The possessive style.
- saghm 2y ago> The article doesn't mention it, but am I right in assuming this basically comes from McDonald's? There are a lot of places around the world that copy the "'s" where it doesn't exist natively, but only for restaurant names or similar -- like "Bob's" is the McDonald's clone in Brazil [1]. For whatever reason, it drives me crazy when I hear people refer to Pizzeria Uno as "Uno's". I've had conversations about it multiple times with different people in my family. There's no one named "Uno", it's a number! I try not to be a prescriptivist but for whatever reason this bothers me to an irrational degree, and I can't understand why nobody else notices.
- complianceowl 2y agoI love Uno's.
- aiforecastthway 2y agoThe establishments are owned by a corporate person named "Uno Restaurant Holdings Corporation". So calling it Uno's isn't inconsistent with how we talk about Walmart's stores or Google's website, for example.
- anigbrowl 2y agoOne of the annoying things about widespread use of computers has been the butchering of apostrophes by 'smart' quotes because programmers won't take the time to develop understanding and appropriate user interface, eg 1979 -> [open quote]79. Even if the user knows it's wrong, getting the computer to use the closing quote mark instead of 'correcting' it is a trial.
- eleveriven 2y agoFor many, language is a key part of cultural identity, and changes in grammar can feel like a threat to that identity.
- thrownawaysz 2y agoBut we should all bow down to the american cultural imperialism because why not
- renewiltord 2y agoWhether you should or not is irrelevant because you will. No imperialism deigns to ask.
- meling 2y ago> lists “Eva’s Blumenladen” (Eva’s Flower Shop) and “Peter’s Taverne” (Peter’s Tavern) as usable alternatives, though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect. I didn’t understand why Eva’s Brille is incorrect. Anyone understand the difference? Is it only allowed for commercial entities?
- p3rls 2y agoWhat bothers me is when people confuse ` grave accents with apostrophes ', to the grammar gulags with the lot of 'em.
- kps 2y agoI have seen people use commas. Don,t do that.
- ashishb 2y agoThere are only two approaches to languages that the world will follow. One is the Chinese approach, where you create a big geographical entity that speaks your language. The other is the European Laissez-faire approach of respecting a plethora of languages with few speakers which is worthless for most foreigners to learn, all of your mini languages die and get replaced by English. https://ashishb.net/short-stories/prague-airport/ https://ashishb.net/short-stories/prague-airport/
- kemiller 2y agoEnglish takes influence from other languages left and right, but there's always someone salty when it goes the other way.
- booleandilemma 2y agoThat dynamism English has is something that makes it such a great language, imo.
- bmulholland 2y agoIf the intersection of English and German interests you, this essay beautifully captures how the two intermingle: https://europeanreviewofbooks.com/beamer-dressman-bodybag/ https://europeanreviewofbooks.com/beamer-dressman-bodybag/
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoIf y’all don’t like the English style, maybe you should have tried harder and won WWII.
- thangalin 2y agoUNICODE and ASCII apostrophes are a bit absurd. For KeenQuotes[1], my library to automatically curl straight quotes, there's an Apostrophe type that defines variations on how to convert a straight apostrophe to a curled one. The main issue is that most suggestions are to use ’, which isn't semantically correct[2], and at one point Michael Everson noted, "the alphabetic property should be restored to U+02BC"[3]. I've bucked the x27, U+2019, and rsquo trend with: /** No conversion is performed. */ CONVERT_REGULAR( "'", "regular" ), /** Apostrophes become MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE ({@code ʼ}). */ CONVERT_MODIFIER( "ʼ", "modifier" ), /** Apostrophes become APOSTROPHE ({@code '}). */ CONVERT_APOS_HEX( "'", "hex" ), /** Apostrophes become XML APOSTROPHE ({@code '}). */ CONVERT_APOS_ENTITY( "'", "entity" ); Thoughts? [1]: https://whitemagicsoftware.com/keenquotes/ https://whitemagicsoftware.com/keenquotes/ [2]: https://tedclancy.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/which-unicode-character-should-represent-the-english-apostrophe-and-why-the-unicode-committee-is-very-wrong/ https://tedclancy.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/which-unicode-cha... [3]: http://www.unicode.org/L2/L1999/n2043.pdf http://www.unicode.org/L2/L1999/n2043.pdf
- crazygringo 2y agoBut Unicode code points aren't supposed to represent semantics, they're supposed to represent... well, "abstract characters" that are either glyphs or get combined into glyphs, which can have multiple (ambiguous) semantic meanings. That's why there aren't two different period characters to represent the end of a sentence vs. a decimal point, or two different em dashes where one represents a pause while the other comes at the end of dialog to indicate the sentence was interrupted (literally the opposite of a pause, it's being cut off). So since the apostrophe and the right single quote are visually identical, Unicode stays consistent in recommending that they be the same character. The name Unicode gives to a character is intended to represent one of its semantic meanings, not all of them. (Unicode does have plenty of visually identical characters, but they generally belong to totally different languages, like the English "o" and the Greek omicron "ο".)
- thangalin 2y agoThanks for shedding a little more light. Ignoring the semantics, in this case, between an apostrophe and a right single quote has resulted in many documents containing information that can not be parsed unambiguously because we have to pick a glyph and doing so with an ambiguously defined glyph loses contextual information. As a side-effect, since GPTs are based on the examples we give, they can't encode the proper punctuation for many phrases that use British English quotation mark styles, making them unable to "curl" the quotation mark properly. For example, none can curl this paragraph correctly: ''E's got a 'ittle box 'n a big 'un,' she said, 'wit' th' 'ittle 'un 'bout 2'×6". An' no, y'ain't cryin' on th' "soap box" to me no mo, y'hear. 'Cause it 'tweren't ever a spec o' fun!' I says to my frien'. The other downside to using ' or ' is that most fonts treat them as straight quotes, making for "improper" English typography when typeset into a book.
- locallost 2y agoWhether or not this is the correct way to handle it, I don't know, but this: > ...lists “Eva’s Blumenladen” (Eva’s Flower Shop) and “Peter’s Taverne” (Peter’s Tavern) as usable alternatives, though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect ...is as German as it gets. We've made an exception to the rule that also has exceptions. Either accept it as possible or not, this is just plain stupid.
- pseingatl 2y agoAn apostrophe almost landed me in jail. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mu7ami_how-an-apostrophe-almost-landed-me-in-jail-activity-7212914933854842880-zNK_&ved=2ahUKEwjbiYXXhIKJAxWUQvEDHcu9JuUQFnoECBEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3O9_NNGeAJLkc-h8SJP9_5 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mu7ami_how-an-apostrophe-almo...
- amadeuspagel 2y agoCompare: - Rosi's Bar - Rosis Bar With the first it's immidiately clear that Rosi is a woman's name and that the bar belongs to her. With the second it's not clear at all what Rosis is. Maybe some kind drink?
- layer8 2y agoOr some unkind drink.
- BeretEnjoyer 2y agoIt's not unclear at all without the apostrophe, because in German, compound words are written without spaces. If it was indeed a bar that specialized in a drink called "Rosis", it would be spelled "Rosisbar". The space makes it immediately apparent that it's a bar operated by someone called Rosi.
- amadeuspagel 2y agoCompare: - Sport Bar - Lounge Bar - Cafe Bar (All from real german bar names.) - Rosis Bar Rosis could just as well be a word like Sport, Lounge or Cafe.
- layer8 2y agoCorrect German orthography would require a hyphen for the interpretation as a compound noun. Rosis-Bar = a bar serving (or otherwise related to) “Rosis” Rosis Bar = Rosi’s bar
- shafyy 2y agoI also see many people using the % or "z. B." (zum Beispiel, meaning for example) wrongly in German. Corretly, the % should have a space like this: 10 %, not 10% (as it is in English). "z. B." also should have a space, but is often used as "z.B.", like the "e.g." in English. However, as mentioned in the article, not clear to me if this is in fact because of the English influence or some other reason.
- pronik 2y agoSometimes, those rules just don't make any sense. I'm especially amused about the euro sign in German which by its whole design and intention is supposed to be written before the number (€50,00), but is instead written behind the number with a space included (50,00 €). The former looks way better and more concise for me, but maybe the reason is just a historical one, the Germans have been writing "50 DM" for decades after all. On a different note, it's somewhat amusing that "i.e.", "e.g." and "etc." are considered English without any clear alternative in the language, while otherwise Latin-loving Germans haven't adopted those at all (in fairness, "d.h.", "bspw." and "usw." are just fine and I appreciate it when real German is used consistently).
- isametry 2y ago> which by its whole design and intention is supposed to be written before the number (€50,00) What makes you think that? The intention of the € symbol is to be used exactly like other currency notations before it in each respective language. In English it’s before the number, but in many others including German, it is after (50,00 DM). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_sign#Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_sign#Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_the_euro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_the_euro
- bonoboTP 2y ago€ is a unit. Would you write you're ft6 tall or weigh lbs170 or that it's °F77 outside? The weird and exceptional thing is rather that $ is put before the number, which is out of step with pronunciation.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoCocorico! France to the rescue! We anticipated that the British or Americans would try to sneakily introduce their words about computers so we appointed a group of 70-something-years-old literature experts to create the proper words to use for computer stuff. They came up with novel words that made us the laughingstock of the Western world and that nobody wanted to use. The state organizations were forced to, so for some time nobody understood anybody (this is a slightly romanced version but it was a mess). Some of the words made sense, most did not. They were published by an important organization in France as a dictionary. We did a lot of great things in computer science - this dictionary was not one of them.
- isametry 2y agoIn spirit, this kinda reminds me of the Czech chemical nomenclature – large parts of it (including original names for many elements) were designed pretty much single-handledly by natural scientist Jan Svatopluk Presl. This was part of the Czech National Revival: a huge movement in the 1800s to prevent Czech language and culture to die out under the German/Austrian influence. During that time, the vocabulary saw a boom of new, original words (including ridiculous ones) to combat Germanisms at all cost. And so to this day, a portion of the Czech periodic table has unique naming of elements, completely unrelated to their Latin counterparts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_chemical_nomenclature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_chemical_nomenclature
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI think this is similar in Polish - I believe there are different suffixes depending on the level of <something> (IIRC this was for some compounds of Fe)
- pronik 2y agoGerman is a funny language. To be speaking and writing proper German you need to learn all of German, but in addition to that, you'd need Latin grammar to build some plurals, English, French and to lesser extent Italian and Turkish pronunciation for a ton of words, understanding of English idioms, since marketing and movies don't bother with translating taglines anymore, and quite a bit more. It's especially noticeable when you have little kids and have to correct them constantly when they are trying their newly acquired reading skills on billboards along the road.
- tim333 2y agoOf possible relevance - last week's SMBC comic on English being partly of French and German origin https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/arthur https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/arthur Which as a Brit I found quite interesting - I didn't realise the early language of Britain was Common Brittonic before reading that. It got displaced by English and it's closest descendant in the UK is Welsh. It's sort of ironic that after Brittonic was largely wiped out by Germanic settlers, we now send back apostrophes to annoy them.
- CLiED 2y agoIronic, given that the apostrophe is dying out in English.
- guenthert 2y agoI probably have spent too much time in 'merica (yeah, that must be it, not that I would be such a Depp), but I don't see the problem. "Even before the rule clarification, the German orthographic council permitted the use of the possessive apostrophe for the sake of clarity, such as “Andrea’s Bar” to make clear that the owner is called Andrea and not Andreas." And what's wrong with more clarity?
- fennecfoxy 2y agoThe fact they called it the "idiot's apostrophe" makes me glad that it's being adopted in Germany. Jooooin us, join us Anglosphere idiots in our grammar rules!
- lakomen 2y agoIt's because only idiots add a 's when the German grammar clearly states that that doesn't exist. Hermans Wintergarten EZ. But idiots add the 's everywhere. And now the grammar gets changed because too many idiots use 's wrong
- animal531 2y agoLet's see, Rosi's Bar. Fine. Ross's Bar? No, can't be. Ross' Bar? Argh. I'm all for style but unnecessary additions just make life difficult.
- Suzuran 2y agoIt's not like English is much better on its own; We have the "Progressive Apostrophe", which is intended to warn the reader than the letter S is about to appear ("not responsible for accident's", "employee's must wash hand's", etc)
- xg15 2y agoFun fact: There seemed to have been a similar debate in the US at one point, but for entirely different reasons. The US still has some places that contain possessive forms in their names, such as Martha's Vineyard. That seems to have caused some controversy during a standardization effort of place names in the 19th century. The apostrophe was dropped and the official name became "Marthas Vineyard". At some point, it was changed back, I assume because it looked too awkward and ungrammatical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Possessives_in_geographic_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Possessives_in_geog... (As a non-American, the more curious thing for me is that there are still place names that sound as if some 17th century explorer just sailed by and casually gifted the place to his wife. I'd now also like to know who John E. was.)
- physicsguy 2y agoThis was in the news in the UK recently: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-68942321#:~:text=A%20local%20authority%20has%20announced%20it%20will%20ban,be%20produced%20without%20one%2C%20regardless%20of%20previous%20use https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-6....
- rwoerz 2y agoAs a German, I am totally fine with that now allowed use of the apostrohe. But what I find really annoying is the rise of the Deppenleerzeichen (idiot's space). In proper German, you can rely on that a single thing is being denoted by a single string with no spaces in the middle (comparable identifiers in most programming languages). Dashes are still allowed in compound words for better readability (like "dash case" in programming languages).