Germans Decry Influence of English As 'Idiot's Apostrophe' Gets Official Approval (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0175207823
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/07/2250259/germans-decry-influence-of-english-as-idiots-apostrophe-gets-official-approval
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/07/germany-influence-of-english-idiots-apostrophe
> Establishments that feature their owners' names, with signs like "Rosi's Bar" or "Kati's Kiosk" are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. The correct spelling, therefore, would be "Rosis Bar," "Katis Kiosk," or, as in the title of a recent viral hit, Barbaras Rhabarberbar. However, guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph ("idiot's apostrophe") has become so widespread that it is permissible -- as long as it separates the genitive 's' within a proper name.
>
> The new edition of the Council for German Orthography's style guide, which prescribes grammar use at schools and public bodies in Germany, Austria 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. 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"). The new set of rules came into effect in July, and the council said a loosening of the rules in 1996 meant that "Rosi's Bar" had strictly speaking not been incorrect for almost three decades. Yet over the past few days, German newspapers and social media networks have seen a pedants' revolt against the loosening of grammar rules.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/07/germany-influence-of-english-idiots-apostrophe
Devolving into, the babble of babel! (Score:1)
Oh yay!
Re: (Score:2)
> a pedants' revolt
Glad we never have that on /.
English is the language of Shakespeare, Milton (Score:2, Troll)
and the Bible.
All them foreigners would be much better off if they abandoned their barbarian mumbles and just spoke English.
And no stupid regional accents neither. Peoria Illinois or go fuck yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
Ha Ha. Alas, there are a lot of people who really think that the Bible that they are reading in English is the real text and not a semi-incompetent translation full of the prejudices of the translators. Alos, try reading Shakespeare without a set of notes and you will be totally lost. English has changed a lot over the years. The terror that some people in countries like France and German about the effect of English on their language is really rather silly. English has no such problem; it has taken up
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I object to that characterization, it's a semi-incompetent translation of a politically motivated and expurgated translation of a politically motivated and expurgated translation of a semi-incompetent translation.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milton (Score:2)
> English has no such problem; it has taken up words from a vast number of other languages and is the better for it.
It's neither better nor worse, but you might imagine how a bastard tongue of at least threw successively conquering peoples, that might rightly be called a pidgeon and not a real language by some lights, would be discomfitting to a people who have an actual language academy in charge of their words.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milton (Score:2)
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, before English was even a language.
English is maybe 1500 years old, and is now quite different
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There are several books in the Old Testament that were written in Aramaic, along with parts of the Book of Daniel.
Practice more; complain less... (Score:2)
I assume that there's greater symbolic value when the official standards nerds throw in the towel; but it seems like a really bad time to kick up a fuss. Official language regulation bodies are typically reactionary lagging indicators, even changes they approve of take a while to hammered out and written up and there's generally no requirement that they acquiesce to those crazy kids and their slang talk.
If it has reached the point where the RdR has gone with a "fine, do apostrophes" position German speak
The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
I've nver seen this:
> 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").
It's always been potatoes.
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Should we write "two Bs" or "two B's"? Or should we add an "e" as in "potatoes"? Two Bes.
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Yes. Once English speakers learn that the apostrophe isn't just for contractions and can be used before the s to indicate the possessive, they then apply that knowledge while forgetting the bit about it being for the possessive.
I see it on store signs, billboards, and Slashdot posts for pluralization. It's extremely irritating.
Re: The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
Kartoffel or kartoffeln
German's, you're in good company (Score:2)
English speaker's don't know how to use apostrophe's either!
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No one uses apostrophes when speaking.
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What's your point? The article is not about spoken language, it's talking about apostrophes, which are by definition *written*.
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W'e shou'ld jus't ad'd it where t' fu'ck ev'r. Fu'ck Ev'r might even make a good elven village in a fantasy novel.
At least English doesn't do this (Score:2)
In spite of the fact that far too many native-English-speakers make a lot of cringe-worthy mistakes, English doesn't assign gender to inanimate objects. Checkmate.
Germans decry influence of English? (Score:2)
English is German with a French overlay. The other overlay is Norse, which is also German.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Celt (Score:2)
There's also some Celt thrown in there. Or is that from Norse as well? I can't remember.
Obligatory: Ze drem vil finali kum tru (Score:1)
[1]Ze drem vil finali kum tru. [upenn.edu]
Linguistic humor, English spelling reform
Source: An old chestnut. In its globalized incarnation below, via Steven Gearhart.
English in the Future
Directors at Daimler Benz and Chrysler have announced an agreement to adopt English as the preferred language for communications, rather than German, which was another possibility.
As part of the negotiations, directors at Chrysler conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and have accepted a five-year phase-in plan. In t
[1] https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.html
Full Circle: It came from German (Score:2)
It's interesting that Germans are complaining that this is "corrupting" their language when English itself got the 's' for possession from the Old English practice of adding -es to denote the genitive (the 'e' then got replaced by the apostrophe). Old English was a Germanic language derived from earlier West German languages. So, arguably, this "corruption" originated in Germany. If the Saxons had not invaded Roman Britain bringing with them their early Germanic language we'd probably never have this way of
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Fun as a trivia fact, but those people were a few thousand illiterate, bedraggled barbarians running away from other illiterate, bedraggled barbarians to another coast where they found better crops and discovered that the native illiterate, bedraggled barbarians were a bit softer than them. That's not a real origin story. Our language just happened, like most things.
Europe vs English (Score:2)
Weirdos speaking other European languages: "Aaahhh, not English, our pure mother tongue must go untainted!"
English regarding any other language, slang, or new word whatsoever: "We'll take it."
Pedant's Revolt (Score:2)
News for Nerds? That's a big 10-4, good buddy.
Its [sic] not about English (Score:2)
I thought the "idiot's apostrophe" would be "it's" for possession (or lack thereof for the contraction), as in: "The dog licked it's paw". Intuitively this actually makes some sense, as it's parallel to "Spot's paw". But native English speakers might not realize the division is clear: possessive nouns have an apostrophe, while possessive pronouns ("his", "hers", "mine") do not.
Why don't verbs date pronouns? Because the pronouns can get possessive. Also, it gets expensive.
Take it a step further please (Score:2)
Make den der das and die all interchangeable, itâ(TM)s confusing trying to learn German as a native English speaker.
Why do words need genders?
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Words are only echos of the people and not the people themselves.
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We ARE talking about people. Right?
So should society be exposed to that sort of abject, unrelenting idiocy? We've done without it for tens of thousands of years.
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We could do away with a lot of baggage in English too. Why have fly flew flown when we could have fly flied flied. I remember hearing about a radio sportscaster saying some hitter 'flied out', that is, hit a fly ball that was caught. So, just make fly as in what airplanes do be the same as fly when hitting a fly ball. And do the same for all the other strong verbs, like swim, see, run, etc. Oh, and why put an s after a verb in 3rd person singular, make it I run, you run, he run, they run.
Lerners of Eng
Re: (Score:3)
German is both versatile and economical of vocabulary when considering flies: "Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach."
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:1)
> Why do words need genders?
Oh the many reasons:
1. Because they've always had gender.
2. To add a little spice to puns, jokes, and other wordplay.
3. The best reason of all: to piss off the gender-weirdos in the Anglosphere.
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
Gender articles can change the meaning of a word.
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> itâ(TM)s
Ah... a classic case of the idiot's apostrophe.
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+1
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
A classic case of apple keyboard.
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itâ(TM)s very confusing to me
Incormation coding (Score:2)
> Why do words need genders?
They clearly don't (viz: English), but can be used for denser information coding.
A language can have few words and encode a larger number of meanings using stems such as masculine and feminine.
To take a synthetic example, you could have a numeric stem to indicate size of a (piece of) wood: the word for twig would be "one-wood", branch is "two-wood", limb is "three-wood", and trunk/log could be "four-wood". Applying the numeric stem to words allows multiple concepts to be encoded in fewer words.
Gendered noun
Re: Incormation coding (Score:2)
But there are no rules to say which word is which gender.
You just need to learn it for each word.
Why is a fork masculine and a spoon feminine?
Gabel and LÃffel
Why are cows and pigs feminine but goats and chickens are masculine?