The signs are in English, why does it matter how they would be written in German?
How so? "Harald's Eck" (one of the examples from the article) doesn't sound very English to me.
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
#42Earlier 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
With 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)
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#43> 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.
Let'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.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#44> 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).
I 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.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#45The signs are in English, why does it matter how they would be written in German?
The signs are not in English.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporate English is a blight. So many ugly substitutions, overloading existing words, for perfectly good and common words we already have.
Let'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.
We should take this offline so we can really zoom in.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. German…
I 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
I 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.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#48> 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).
Similar—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.
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#49I 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. :)))
Re: Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. German…
The 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 Engli…
I actually go full-descriptivist on this and it erases all the posturing. If you're a speaker of English, native or otherwise, and you say or write something purposefully and don't consider it a mistake then it's correct.
Wether other people will join you in your new usage is yet undetermined but also doesn't really matter. AAVE is the perfect example of this happening large scale in the real world.