If 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?
Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
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Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#12> 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).
“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.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#13> 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).
Those 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?)
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#14> 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).
Corporate English is a blight. So many ugly substitutions, overloading existing words, for perfectly good and common words we already have.
It is my belief that you may not fully leverage the synergistic potential of the value-added verbosity inherent in corporate linguistics.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#15In America an idiot’s apostrophe is when someone uses it to pluralize words and it too seems to be growing in use.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
There 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".
he's/she's going to have to deal with it
Or 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.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#17If 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?
[deleted]
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#18> 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).
Learning can be the gerund form of the verb “to learn” and isn’t necessarily a noun referring to the abstract concept.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#19[flagged]
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#20Made 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.
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source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/leq19j/english_to_be...