121–130 of 576 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not singling out the Germans, mind you. I smirk also when the French complain of American modes of thought polluting their schools: when municipal bureaucrats let contracts not for demolition but for deconstruction, I say that we have injuries to avenge.
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.
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…
> To my knowledge, the only proposal that gained some modest but significant results on that side over the last century is Esperanto. You know, the language against which France has put its veto has it was proposed as language of communication in League of Nations (1920s) or UNESCO (1954) and still is unhelpful with its adoption in United Nations.
Esperanto is not a "global international neutral language" either. While artificially constructed, it's functionally a Romance language, deriving over 80% of its vocabulary as well as the majority of its grammatical structure from Latin and/or Romance languages. The majority of the remainder comes from other European languages, primarily Germanic languages.
Speaking of the English language influencing German, I want my Erdbeermarmelade back. I don't care that english marmalde cannot be made of strawberries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When in doubt use das like half the population of Berlin.
Can we get the other half to convert? Gendered articles are so annoying to remember, especially if you have to travel between German-speaking places that don't agree on all the noun genders. English speakers cannot be expected to understand this!
That's what Dutch did. As spoken in most of the Netherlands, Dutch "eliminated" grammatical gender... which is to say it now has two grammatical genders: "both" ("de") and "neither" ("het").
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... )
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... )