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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

#281

Post by oersted »

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…

This has historically been the philosophy of English linguists, but for many languages (Spanish, French, German…) there is a central institution that does indeed decide what is officially correct. Their decisions are taken seriously and are intentionally propagated anywhere where language is used in a somewhat official context (not just in public institutions).

True they adapt the standard over time following common usage, but the standard is the primary source of truth and many things are decided unilaterally regardless of common usage.

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

#282

Post by kayodelycaon »

xdennis wrote: post #228
jasonpeacock wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You know very well what sex your boss is, but "they" is used for virtue signaling.

I doubt it's virtue signaling. I'll use they to refer to the position not the person. Sometimes it's deliberate obscuration. Other times it's a form of laziness. I don't have to think about which pronoun to use if I just use the generic one.

In my case, once I got used to seeing people as people first instead of their gender, it's been easy to slip up on the pronoun.

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

#283

Post by carlmr »

Tainnor wrote: post #141

While I personally dislike this for "aesthetic" reasons, I do recognise that languages change and that's fine. It used to be that very few people would read and write, but with the advent of the internet, text messaging, etc., written language is also evolving more "democratically", similar to spoken language. There are also technological forces at work: I've mostly given up on writing compound words the proper way o…

>the new rule allows it only in very specific circumstances. I'm of the opinion that nobody should have to consult a complicated rulebook in order to write well

Exactly. If you ask me it kind of makes sense to have it for possesive (not plural) use anyway. It clarifies that the s is not part of the name but serves a different function.

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

#284

Post by samatman »

pjot wrote: post #10
okeuro49 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"informations" is a good one for non-native English language speakers to look out for.

As is “codes” - I hear this often from non-native colleagues

Hearing "codes" generally means you've found yourself around Fortran. Simple as.

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

#285

Post by f33d5173 »

nomilk wrote: post #154
mattlondon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Waters Edge is totally fine if they mean "by the edge of the waters" and not "the edge belongs to the water". But hey, there are no rules or logic in English so have at it!

I think I understand: I thought about trees: Tree leaves (leaves from a tree) Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree) Same logic for water: Water edge (an edge that happens to be of a body of water) Waters edge (same but of more than one body of water)

In tree leaves, it could be leaves from a single tree or multiple trees. Hence, you can't pluralize tree into trees leaves, tree isn't allowed to recieve a plural there. If you write it as tree's leaves, then tree is singular, and the form is possessive (whereas before it served to disambiguate from, say, leaves of a book). Then you can also pluralize tree to trees' leaves, and now it's leaves from multiple trees.

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

#286

Post by anigbrowl »

One of the annoying things about widespread use of computers has been the butchering of apostrophes by 'smart' quotes because programmers won't take the time to develop understanding and appropriate user interface, eg 1979 -> [open quote]79. Even if the user knows it's wrong, getting the computer to use the closing quote mark instead of 'correcting' it is a trial.

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

#287

Post by WalterBright »

jcranmer wrote: post #269
wil421 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is English just badly pronounced French?[1] I wish English would’ve adopted conjugation and other patterns the Romance languages use. I doubt it would’ve fit correctly. But it would be better than having 1,000s of badly pronounced French words in the language. [1] https://www.barrons.com/amp/news/english-just-badly-pronounc...

> Is English just badly pronounced French? No, English is a Germanic language whose conjugation rules have severely atrophied, with (mostly specialized!) terminology liberally adopted from Latin, Greek, and other roots. In things like tense and aspect structure, I believe that English hews a lot closer to German than French.

English is a barbarian language with French nouns, as a result of the Norman conquest of England.

Amusingly, using the French words is a signal to being upper class. Such as "purchase" (pourchacier) instead of "buy" (byan).

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

#288

Post by WalterBright »

makeitdouble wrote: post #277
samatman wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we're going for accuracy, your statement would have to explain how it goes for other situations, for instance: - words spoken by toddlers: what's the spelling of a word that doesn't exist outside of a kid's brain ? In particular parents can accept it as a word without ever setting an associated writing. - written words that don't have a pronounciation: typically Latin is dead and how any of it is pronounced is up…

> typically Latin is dead and how any of it is pronounced is up to how we feel about it.

How words were pronounced can be deduced from poetry.

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

#289

Post by makeitdouble »

tivert wrote: post #197
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... )

> 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…

For what it's worth CJK countries tend to give less weight to how foreign names are pronounced.

For instance the current PRC secretary name is pronounced accordingly to the characters' reading in Taiwan and Japan, and won't have much in common. Same way Chinese people will read Japanese name as the characters sound to them, without referring to the actual Japanese reading, even if in Japan these names have a designated original reading.

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

#290

Post by nomilk »

f33d5173 wrote: post #285
nomilk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I understand: I thought about trees: Tree leaves (leaves from a tree) Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree) Same logic for water: Water edge (an edge that happens to be of a body of water) Waters edge (same but of more than one body of water)

In tree leaves, it could be leaves from a single tree or multiple trees. Hence, you can't pluralize tree into trees leaves, tree isn't allowed to recieve a plural there. If you write it as tree's leaves, then tree is singular, and the form is possessive (whereas before it served to disambiguate from, say, leaves of a book). Then you can also pluralize tree to trees' leaves, and now it's leaves from multiple trees.

Would the same logic also invalidate ‘waters edge’?
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