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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

#211

Post by xdennis »

cs702 wrote: post #100

Reading this, I come away with the impression that European languages today are evolving due to the influence of "Vulgar English" (the lowest common denominator of English spoken by the most people worldwide), analogously to how Romance languages like Spanish and French evolved in the past due to the influence of "Vulgar Latin."[a] --- [a] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Romance-languages

> Romance languages [...] evolved in the past due to the influence of "Vulgar Latin."

Minor correction: they are derived, not influenced by Vulgar Latin.

That's why so many words are different from Classical Latin, but similar between Romance languages. Like how Latin for house is "domus", but Romance languages use casa/casă/chez because common people referred to their house by the word "casa".

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

#212

Post by leipert »

allemagne wrote: post #161

This makes me really curious how quickly German has actually evolved over time. My assumptions would be entirely informed from extrapolating from historical context and not knowing anything about German. So there was probably a lot of linguistic diversity before unification in 1870, then there would have been a standardization effort started by Bismarck (favoring the dialect predominantly spoken in Prussia) which wou…

Oh, big official orthographic reforms happened in 1944 and then in 1996. So that happened in the 90s, and a few minor revisions after that.

A lot of English vocabulary (technology but also every day life) had an influence on German, especially in Eastern Germany post-reunion. An example: Most people born after 1990 probably invite you to a Geburtstagsparty instead of a Geburtstagsfeier.

Compared to the after-war generations, hyper-local dialects probably faded out as bit as well. If I talk to people from my grandparents generation, there were sometimes difference in terms even though people just lived a few villages apart.

Biggest development I am happy about, is that the capital ẞ is probably becoming official during my life time.

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

#213

Post by meyum33 »

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... )

It won’t work. Just look at the mess of Imperial units in the United States. And this is when the metric system is vastly more straightforward, simply better, and universally adopted. The English language? No way any standardization would work. And that unlike the Imperial system the variations in English is probably a feature, not a bug.

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

#214

Post by speakeron »

graypegg wrote: post #186
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... )

There are specific subsets of English that are used in certain domains that have standards bodies behind them, like Simplified Technical English for aviation. It even has a working group! [0] VOA also have a Learning English spec for broadcast english [1] but that seems to be a lot looser of a spec. So it's definitely not impossible. The funny thing, is I remember being told in grade school that in English Canada, I…

The use of a space as a thousands separator has been around since the 1940s as recommended by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and it was what we used when I was a kid at school in the UK. They specified it should be a thin (half) space.

https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/28433818/working-docume...

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

#215

Post by tivert »

hosh wrote: post #205
tivert wrote: post #197

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 ;) 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…

Pinyin is pretty good at rendering Manderin in a Latin script. Can you elaborate on what you mean by “English-friendly”?

> Pinyin is pretty good at rendering Manderin in a Latin script.

It's pretty good for Mandarin speakers. It's terrible for English speakers.

> Can you elaborate on what you mean by “English-friendly”?

English friendly is something that will produce reasonably-close approximate pronunciations by an English reader without any extra foreign-language training. Basically, something that prioritizes following existing English orthography (e.g. do not use "c" for "ts", use the closest approximate for sounds that do no exist in English) instead of maximal fidelity to the foreign language.

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

#216

Post by ldoughty »

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…

Being an old grey beard you probably know these... but for others:

> * 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".)

Prior to movable type printing presses, the British "logical quotation" system was the norm for English.

This changed, and is credited to american newspapers, because of movable type. I've heard different reasoning (from being less likely to break, or to looking cleaner), but both point to printers. Even the alternate name for this quotation style is "typesetters quotation." Being a form of mass media, this meant that a lot of mass produced works now 'promoted' by proxy this typesetters quotation style.

Source for some more info on the above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_marks_in_English

> * Moving away from verbed nouns ("Google it") to multipart verbs ("search it up").

This is purely branding. In the US, if people say "Google it", it creates a synonym between "Google" and "Search", which hurts cases for Google in defending their brand... If it gets too weak, then you or I could make a "Google Booster" company, which focuses on improving search engine rankings in general -- not just Google, and with no direct business relation with Google

See: Kleenex, Band-aid, ChapStick, Crock-pot, Jacuzzi

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

#217

Post by cardiffspaceman »

OptionOfT wrote: post #76

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?

CAESARS is correct because it’s a palace of Caesars, not of the Caesar. Something to think about while you’re stuck in Las Vegas traffic.

https://www.caesars.com/caesars-palace/things-to-do/nightlif...

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

#219

Post by gtk40 »

meyum33 wrote: post #213
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... )

It won’t work. Just look at the mess of Imperial units in the United States. And this is when the metric system is vastly more straightforward, simply better, and universally adopted. The English language? No way any standardization would work. And that unlike the Imperial system the variations in English is probably a feature, not a bug.

And it is not just the US. In the UK from my limited experience visiting they use a mess of different units commonly. Certainly not all in on metric.

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

#220

Post by wolframhempel »

I feel that most people instinctively assume that some institution, e.g. the government or the dictionary publishers are the authority on what constitutes "correct language". It's important to emphasize that language (included spelling) is something that develops organically and that the role of these institutions is just to capture the status quo.

At least that should be the case in free societies. Language is power - and controlling it is an important aspect of exercising control.

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