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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

#221

Post by SoftTalker »

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.

Clerk probably had nothing to do with it, could not change it, and didn't care anyway.

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

#222

Post by qwertox »

OptionOfT wrote: post #96
maxnoe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, according to the new rule, it's only permitted in proper names "Eva's Blumenladen" is the proper name of the shop, what is put on the sign above the door. "Evas Brille" is just Eva's glasses.

Oh shoot, I read it as Eva's Glasses, the name of her eyewear shop.

That would be "Eva’s Brillenladen".

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

#223

Post by everforward »

asimpletune wrote: post #187
everforward wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe using "of" is correct when using "myriad" as a noun, the same as "many" or "number" (the noun form of numerous). "He had a great number of seashells", "she possessed a myriad of skills". Apparently it used to/still means 10,000 so it should be usable anywhere 10,000 is. "There were a myriad of them"/"there were 10,000 of them".

O that’s funny. Apparently it was originally a noun, hundreds of years ago. It actually changed into the adjectival use I was referring to earlier in the 1800s. If anything it seems that using myriad as an adjective was actually an example of a rule change made to accommodate how people were speaking at the time.

Language is certainly a fascinating thing. The adjective form of "legion" always throws me off, like in the Anonymous slogan ("we are legion").

Off topic, but now I do kind of wish the Magic: The Gathering mechanic was named "Legion" instead of "Myriad".

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

#225

Post by pjmlp »

guitarbill wrote: post #169
pjmlp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?".

Huh, "Hast du das gechecked?" used to mean "Hast du das kapiert?", with a quite negative connotation.

Depends on the context, at least based on my experience from 1live and Cosmo interviews, and some TV series.

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

#226

Post by aeyes »

colanderman wrote: post #87
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?

The former are names of businesses, the latter is just referring to someone's personal item. (This confused the heck out of me at first too.)

But I can style the name of my business however I want, "E'v'a's Blumenladen" is correct because I say so. I don't need anyones approval.

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

#227

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Tainnor wrote: post #158
rafram wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No natural language is actually 100% phonetic. Romanian is no exception. Romanian spelling and pronunciation are close to phonetic, but the same is true of German.

A writing system being phonetic would be impractical, because most languages have tons of little phonetic alterations of individual sounds depending on position in the word/syllable, regional variation, etc. What you usually want is that the writing system be phonemic , i.e. that there is a 1:1 correspondence between phonemes (meaningfully distinctive sound units) and characters. Unfortunately, languages evolve, so e…

English should just abandon differentiating vowels all together. All dialects of English shwa unemphasized vowels to some extent, and the different dialects largely boil down to how we pronounce various vowels.

J`st ch`nge `m t` di`cr`t'c m`rks, `nd `t's st`ll p`rf`ctl` l`g`ble

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

#228

Post by xdennis »

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

> people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;)

Not true. It was used in the past to refer to an unknown person. I.e. "When a candidate arrives given them the test." You don't know what sex the candidate is before he arrives and instead of saying "he or she" you say "they".

But nowadays people use it as a superclass of he and she: "I asked my boss for a raise but they refused". It doesn't make any sense. You know very well what sex your boss is, but "they" is used for virtue signaling. It's a way of saying "I know my boss is a man, but I'm going to use they because a woman could do just a good a job and he, sorry, they does."

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

#229

Post by wrzuteczka »

xdennis wrote: post #211
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".

Weird twist: Slavic languages use words very similar to "domus" for "house", for example, "dom" in Polish or "дом" in Ukrainian.
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