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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

#71

Post by psychoslave »

nanna wrote: post #31
okeuro49 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Well, for what I red, Einstein primary language stayed German all life through (Information/Informationen). And he learned English rather late in life, starting at 34 apparently.[1] And while not speaking German, he was more likely to practice some Italian as a spontaneous expression desire (informazione/informazioni) and did practice French well enough to give a lecture in this latter language (information/informations).

[1] https://www.lingalot.com/what-languages-did-albert-einstein-...

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

#73

Post by sokoloff »

mwigdahl wrote: post #14
vundercind wrote: post #6

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.

Unless there’s a fulcrum involved, I don’t want to read the word “leverage”.

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

#74

Post by raverbashing »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #53
raverbashing wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Different words. "His dog" means the dog belonging to him. "He's a dog" means "he is a dog".

> 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.

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

#76

Post by OptionOfT »

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.

Why is 'Eva's Brille incorrect', but 'Eva's Blumenladen' ok?

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

#77

Post by pivo »

itronitron wrote: post #51
waterproof wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the article they call that the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” as in “twelve potato’s”.

I don't know that I have ever seen that in the wild, but probably only because I refuse to accept that it exists.

I saw it in a Home Depot in the US once. It was father's day and there was a sign that read, "Dad's Love Tools". Of course they meant to say, "Dads Love Tools".

I thought it was particularly funny and embarrassing for the store, but I couldn't get the clerk at the store to understand what was wrong.

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

#79

Post by rafram »

alex_john_m wrote: post #49

I 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. :)))

No 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.

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

#80

Post by jjk166 »

psychoslave wrote: post #65
okeuro49 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But did you know that there huge load of "datas" out there?

That one's a bit mean given that data does have a distinct plural, it just happens to be spelled the same because whoever came up with english didn't really grok the phonetic alphabet.
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