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Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

theguardian.com

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Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#31
post #7

> 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).

"informations" is a good one for non-native English language speakers to look out for.

Nonsense. Informations has long been used in English. I have before me a letter by Albert Einstein to Norbert Wiener regarding a young Kurt Eisemann, in which Einstein writes, "From his letter enclosed here, you will get informations about his life and studies before he arrived here." And in the Princeton translation of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens one finds, "The Eleven also bring up informations laid against magistrates alleged to be disqualified". Informations is perhaps a bit obscure but it's perfectly valid.

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#33

Made 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 wou…

Reads like Mark Twain’s short piece “A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling”

https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.html

[edit] Maybe Twain, anyway. The attribution is dubious, but common.

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#34

> 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" 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...

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#35

Made 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 wou…

Two beers fine for an old joke!

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#36

Earlier 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".

Er, yes because they're short for he is and she is. You mean "his" and "hers".

But you don't write them like that, you write "his/hers"

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#37

Made 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 wou…

I think the conclusion is wrong; that sounds much more like dutch.

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#38
post #26

[flagged]

By 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.

But what about my karma and bragging rights? :)

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#39
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"informations" is a good one for non-native English language speakers to look out for.

As is “codes” - I hear this often from non-native colleagues

This 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.

Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. It's very important to maximize cross-functional coherence to capitalize on strategic imperatives for maximal growth opportunities.
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