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

Post by inglor_cz » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

Muromec wrote: post #251

inglor_cz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is doubly so if your native language is also a gendered one, but with different genders for common objects. It makes a mess in your head. CZ: ten nůž (masc.) - DE: das Messer (neutr.) - EN: knife CZ: ten svět (masc.) - DE: die Welt (fem.) - EN: world CZ: ta žába (fem.) - DE: der Frosch (masc.) - EN: frog Also, personified Death and rivers seem to be masculine-coded in Germanic languages, and feminine-coded in Slav…

To nobody's surprise ніж, світ, жаба have exactly right genders so it's Germans who are confused.

Post by BitwiseFool » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #252

wolframhempel wrote: post #220

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…

France has a mechanism to try to stop this: the Académie Française [1] that publishes the official French dictionary. Rather than simply recording language as its used, they do actively try to steer it. They're most well known for trying to suppress anglicisms, e.g. in the early 2000s they pushed 'courriel' instead of 'email'. That one did not work out - email is much more common, and finally entered the dictionary i…

Post by catlikesshrimp » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #249

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…

> So it's definitely not impossible. Well, it's definitely not impossible to publish a document declaring itself the standard form of english. But I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to get english speakers to comply - or even to get any countries to make the standard legally binding.

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:48 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #239

deng wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A more accurate statement is that English is a language where spelling often reflects history and etymology, rather than phonetics. There's always a relation between a spoken word and its written representation, they're the same thing in different mediums.

Post by kristjansson » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #70

glitchc wrote: post #68

Meanwhile in English we have our own apostrophe catastrophe where it's become commonplace online to add one to a plural.

Or the Americanism of double quotes for emphasis: > Bob's "Big" Bookstore!