Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by martijnarts » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

onlypassingthru wrote: post #159

ktosobcy wrote: post #112

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... )

The beauty of English is that it is controlled by the speakers and not by some pompous authority. It's even flexible enough to allow for regional differences, which allows my fellow Americans and I to spell words correctly like color and theater .

For what it's worth, French is also controlled by speakers. The pompous authority is just lagging behind.

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

#172

Post by cdumler » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

Being an old, grey beard, it's been interesting to see language change in my lifetime. Things I learned:

  * Third-person singular indefinite ("he or she") can be replaced with third-person plural ("they").  Of course, a lot of changes around recognizing gender.
  * Final punctuation within the quote at the end of sentence (Did you just say "what?") can be placed after the final quote if the quote is for a literal string (ie, The password is "123456".)
  * Companies switched from being singular plurals ("Google is deprecating another product.") to plural singulars ("Google are deprecating another product.")
  * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up").
  * Double infinitives ("to try to eat") getting changed to an infinitive and conjunction ("to try and eat").

One thing I am very said about is just how lack luster both of my kid's hand writing is. My eldest is in high-school and her hand writing is horrible. Partly because she has little use for long-form writing (forget cursive) and because they rely on the spell checker.

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

#173

Post by cdrini » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:24 PM UTC

I love to see language evolve like this! Dictionaries and grammar rules are not prescriptive, they follow what/how people speak, not the other way around. They do influence in the opposite direction as well, as a bit of a normalizing/consolidating force. I feel like for the last few decades (at least) we've treated dictionaries like gospel, with very strict, almost mathematical definitions of "correct". I think giving a bit of freedom to allow new words/etc to develop naturally, like they have since the dawn of human language, is quite nice! I.e. Make fetch happen!

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

#174

Post by aejfghalsgjbae » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:24 PM UTC

gerikson wrote: post #67

We see these in Swedish too and they're just as incorrect, grammatically. But the worst thing is usually the acute accent is used instead of a real apostrophe, which just makes it stand out even more.

You get that a lot in Germany and the grave accent too, as with "Rosi`s" in the article image. I guess the acute accent is laziness because unlike the apostrophe, it doesn't need the shift key on a standard German keyboard layout. The grave accent is at shift+´ so just weird.

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

#175

Post by xdennis » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

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. :)))

It's not though. It's much more regular than english, but there are a lot of issues (which were addressed in the past).

Take for example the sentence "Ea ia ia". It's pronounced /ja ja ia/.

Some examples:

* x exists and it's not clear if it's pronounced /ks/ or /gz/.

* e is sometimes pronounced /je/

* h is pronounced as /x/ sometimes and Romanians don't realize this. E.g. hrană is [ˈxra.nə] even though people think they say [ˈhra.nə]

* i is the worst letter in Romanian. It has three pronunciations: /i/, /j/ and /ʲ/. Take for example "copiii". Is it pronounced /kopiji/, /kopiii/, /kopʲji/? Nope, it's /koˈpi.iʲ/ . In the past /j/ and /ʲ/ were written with ĭ making things a bit easier.

* Stress is not written which causes confusions between words like "muie" /mu'je/ (softened) and "muie" /'muje/ (blowjob)

* /ɨ/is written as both î and â based on some stupid rule to preserve România being writen as România instead of Romînia. This is to remind foreigners that we were once Romans, but it's pointless because most foreigners think Romania means "land of Roma (gypsy) people".

I've heard that Serbian in Cyrillic is very phonetic though.

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

#176

Post by onlypassingthru » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

kyleee wrote: post #123

pivo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dad’s Love Tool strikes again

Dad's Love Tool is why he's a dad.

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

#177

Post by ghayes » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

cdrini wrote: post #173

I love to see language evolve like this! Dictionaries and grammar rules are not prescriptive, they follow what/how people speak, not the other way around. They do influence in the opposite direction as well, as a bit of a normalizing/consolidating force. I feel like for the last few decades (at least) we've treated dictionaries like gospel, with very strict, almost mathematical definitions of "correct". I think givin…

Just to clarify, I think you have the terms reversed. Descriptivism is, as you say, describing a language from its everyday usage. Prescriptivism is when you follow a rules body or dictionary to say what is “correct.”

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

#178

Post by cdrini » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

lagniappe wrote: post #149

Also, another common one I see more these days is "it's" where it should be "its". If you can not substitute a usage of "it's" for "it has", "it was", or "it is", then you meant to say "its". It is hard to even be angry about it, I think the language should be changed so that any instances of "its" -> "it's" to eliminate the exception.

Strong agree. As a kid, I remember I'd have to pause for like 5s every time I wrote "it's" or "its" to try to remember what was correct. And it doesn't help that what I'd usually remember is "well apostrophe s denotes possession usually, so surely apostrophe s denotes possession here as well". But alas not. I think always having the apostrophe makes way more sense.

(Nowadays I just don't double check it and it's basically a cointoss if I get it right or not :P)

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

#179

Post by sigmoid10 » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:30 PM UTC

cdrini wrote: post #173

I love to see language evolve like this! Dictionaries and grammar rules are not prescriptive, they follow what/how people speak, not the other way around. They do influence in the opposite direction as well, as a bit of a normalizing/consolidating force. I feel like for the last few decades (at least) we've treated dictionaries like gospel, with very strict, almost mathematical definitions of "correct". I think givin…

tru dat! Language be evolvin like craZy n we shuld just roll wit it! Dictiunarys try to tell us wut 2 do but we aint gotta lissen! Its lyk, who needz rulez when we can make up wordz as we go, amirite? Letz just keep makin fetch happen!!!

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

#180

Post by cdrini » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 4:30 PM UTC

ghayes wrote: post #177

cdrini wrote: post #173

I love to see language evolve like this! Dictionaries and grammar rules are not prescriptive, they follow what/how people speak, not the other way around. They do influence in the opposite direction as well, as a bit of a normalizing/consolidating force. I feel like for the last few decades (at least) we've treated dictionaries like gospel, with very strict, almost mathematical definitions of "correct". I think givin…

Just to clarify, I think you have the terms reversed. Descriptivism is, as you say, describing a language from its everyday usage. Prescriptivism is when you follow a rules body or dictionary to say what is “correct.”

Darn thank you for the correction! I forgot a "not" in there. Fixed!