Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 576 posts

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

#191

Post by [deleted] »

deng wrote: post #144
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…

But this is not even about language, it's about spelling. For some reason, people forget that these are entirely different things. We are currently communicating in a language where there's often times no relation between the written and spoken word at all.

[deleted]

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

#192

Post by generic92034 »

marssaxman wrote: post #139
ben_w wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

In scientific computing, they tend to say "code" where the rest of us would say "program".

Programs? I rarely hear it these days. It's all "apps". ;)

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

#193

Post by partiallypro »

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... )

One reason English is so popular (aside from pure economics) and that other countries quickly adopt English slang words is because we don't have such a thing.

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

#194

Post by hilux »

cafard wrote: post #122

Given the long and deplorable influence of German on American scholarly prose, this inspires only Schadenfreude. 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.

In English, "Schadenfreude" is not capitalized!

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

#195

Post by ghayes »

cdumler wrote: post #172

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…

Is “search it up” much different from a similar phrase “search for it”? The structure of the original quote is “imperative verb, direct object, adverb” but I wouldn’t call that a change in grammar so much as a change in diction.

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

#196

Post by unsupp0rted »

cdumler wrote: post #172

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…

I bet her calligraphy sucks too. And is she any good at milking a cow?

In 2024 there's no need to feel sad about deprecated (or now niche) skills being lackluster.

I'd be more concerned if she couldn't find information efficiently when she goes searching for it. That's a skill that mustn't be lackluster.

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

#197

Post by tivert »

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 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 ;)

That's even less likely now than in the past, with the elite cultural trends in English-speaking countries favoring the adoption of foreign spellings and pronunciation. That just piles on the complexity to unmanageable levels.

IMHO, for instance, there's no excuse for the requirement that English newspaper readers know Pinyin [1], rather than some more English-friendly romanization system, to be able to read news about China, when Chinese speakers themselves use a completely different, non-roman writing system. What's next, just printing the Chinese characters without romanization? Pinyin has its uses, but writing things out for foreigners is not something it does well.

[1] which gives many letters very unexpected values (e.g. c = ts) and many vowels are impossible for an English-speaker to guess correctly.

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

#198

Post by cafard »

orwin wrote: post #170
cafard wrote: post #122

Given the long and deplorable influence of German on American scholarly prose, this inspires only Schadenfreude. 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.

'deconstruction' in the French theory was only use by Derrida as a mean to critique a literary work. What it means is that you only judge the works by itself. You should not judge it by the standards of the time you read it, nor by the standard of the time it was written, nor by its author life. You judge it by its internal contradictions, its hypocrisy. Your external knowledge should have no impact on how you judge…

I did not say that deconstruction was pollution. I do think that many of a generation of American scholars found it hard to write or think other than in terms worked out in Paris between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s.

I used the word "polluting" in referring to American thought as influencing French, and that perhaps was a little strong. What I had in mind is mentioned for example in https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59584125.

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

#199

Post by zolbrek »

pjmlp wrote: post #157
subpixel wrote: post #81

I lived in Germany on two occasions and regularly consume German media. English words are all over the German vernacular, to the point that it's really, really annoying.

As someone living here for the last 20 years, and also nowadays understands a bit of dialects and related slag, it is kind of curious the amount of Denglish words among the youth. For example, "Hast Du das geprüft?" quickly turns into "Hast du das gecheckt?".

I usually find it amusing.

„Was meinst, kriegen wir das hin?“

„Safe Digga, das ist so was von easy.“

And they think they're so cool talking like that.

The part that irritates me though is when I try to pronounce Denglish stuff with a German accent and the Germans end up not understanding me. I made a joke about strippers once and got only blank looks, then one guy said, "oh, you mean strippers," pronouncing it the way you'd say it in English as best as he could. I had pronounced it schtrippas.

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

#200

Post by nmeofthestate »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #182
cdumler wrote: post #172

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…

Singular "they" has been around for a very long time, and used naturally without anyone noticing it as unusual, until recently when there's been more gender discussion and people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

You're right - that has been around for a long long time. But I feel like I've seen a general increase in its usage that can make writing more ambiguous to parse. Like we already know the gender of someone being written about in a sentence, but they become referred to as "they" at random - it's a subtle effect. I'm talking about examples unrelated to "gender stuff" but perhaps that's what's made the usage more popular among younger writers.
Post reply on HN