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

Post by graypegg » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

speakeron wrote: post #214

graypegg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Post by Tepix » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #15

In America an idiot’s apostrophe is when someone uses it to pluralize words and it too seems to be growing in use.

Post by tannhaeuser » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

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... )

Post by Muromec » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

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…

Post by samatman » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

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.