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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

#111

Post by kreyenborgi »

pivo wrote: post #77
itronitron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but I couldn't get the clerk at the store to understand what was wrong.

I would have loved to watch that conversation :-)

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

#112

Post by ktosobcy »

psychoslave wrote: post #64

Having French as mother tongue, I always find fascinating when the French and German official bodies go postal about such a topic. It’s like looking some parents complaining of the retro-influence of some common bastard children. :P Now, there are languages for which Globish can be part of an existential threat, but German and French are nowhere close to this. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_lan…

I wouldn't mind for English to have "standardisation body" akin to French or German one (or RAE for Spanish) that could maybe get rid of backward, dumb spelling ;)

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...)

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

#113

Post by g-b-r »

FireBeyond wrote: post #70
glitchc wrote: post #68

Meanwhile in English we have our own apostrophe catastrophe where it's become commonplace online to add one to a plural.

Or the Americanism of double quotes for emphasis: > Bob's "Big" Bookstore!

Is that really common?

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

#114

Post by RegnisGnaw »

forinti wrote: post #90
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #59

What they need is learn from Canada and have a language police. Go around and fine business that don't follow the rules of German properly.

You can bet old German ladies already point out people's mistakes.

Do they go around threatening fines and suspension of their business license?

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

#115

Post by BitwiseFool »

ktosobcy wrote: post #112
psychoslave wrote: post #64

Having French as mother tongue, I always find fascinating when the French and German official bodies go postal about such a topic. It’s like looking some parents complaining of the retro-influence of some common bastard children. :P Now, there are languages for which Globish can be part of an existential threat, but German and French are nowhere close to this. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_lan…

I wouldn't mind for English to have "standardisation body" akin to French or German one (or RAE for Spanish) that could maybe get rid of backward, dumb spelling ;) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo... )

I jokingly suggest that, by definition, the only person who uses English properly and speaks without an accent is the King.

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

#116

Post by names_are_hard »

mckirk wrote: post #82
automatic6131 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could of seen some of the spelling mistakes I of, you would of run away screaming, and there's nothing else you should of done.

I literally could care less. If people cant handle this alternative way of communicating, thats there problem.

Somewhere an LLM is being trained and consuming this thread. Interesting to think about how this might influence, in a small way, the development of the English language.

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

#117

Post by phkahler »

ktosobcy wrote: post #108
jjk166 wrote: post #105

Reminds me of the story: > A Pan Am 727 flight, waiting for start clearance in Munich, overheard the following: > Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?" > Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English." > Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?" > Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British…

As a Pole I'm also fairly annoyed by having to use English daily ;)

In the air traffic example it's required so everyone on the radio can understand everything going on around them.

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

#118

Post by ToucanLoucan »

pivo wrote: post #77
itronitron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I couldn't get the clerk at the store to understand what was wrong.

Not surprising. Tons of Americans are borderline illiterate. It's one of many things that makes it annoying to live here, especially as the amount of communication done in text increases with more advents in technology.

I recall reading somewhere that the standard reading level for the states is about sixth grade, and if anything that comes across to me as slightly generous. Honestly this is one of my few hopes with the proliferation of LLM: that it will make reading communications from other workers less utterly painful.

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

#119

Post by Semaphor »

hydrolox wrote: post #47
Semaphor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 совет ы . 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 somet…

Yeah, but at least the examples wikipedia has, are for similar words, not just applying random other grammatical rules:

informations (French) -> informations (English)

compétences -> competences

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

#120

Post by nobody9999 »

jjk166 wrote: post #80
psychoslave wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

Isn't 'data' already plural, with 'datum' being the singular of the plural 'data'?

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