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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

#291

Post by MarkusWandel »

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.

Boy have they atrophied. Even as a German speaker in whose first language these words have current equivalents I'm not 100% certain when to use thou, thee, thy, thine etc. that still were part of the language at Shakespeare's time and have since been simplified into you/your/yours etc. But it's true, English takes this stuff in stride, with modernisms e.g. "sick" meaning something good gradually being incorporated into the mainstream, rather than fought against by language purists.

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

#292

Post by sweezyjeezy »

diego_moita wrote: post #278
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…

Well, communication needs standards. As much as we need someone to define what is http, TCP/IP or Posix we also need someone to define what is English, Spanish or any language. If you don't believe it then try to understand whatever language a Venezuelan or Dominican speaks. That blabber is anything but Spanish.

But what are you suggesting? It wouldn't be better if Venezuela had its language dictated by another country (e.g. Spain) - that would just be oppressive.

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

#294

Post by eleveriven »

crazygringo wrote: post #264

The article doesn't mention it, but am I right in assuming this basically comes from McDonald's? There are a lot of places around the world that copy the "'s" where it doesn't exist natively, but only for restaurant names or similar -- like "Bob's" is the McDonald's clone in Brazil [1]. I'm mostly curious whether "Rosi's" and "Kati's" in the article are seen by Germans as intentionally trying to look "foreign", rathe…

You're onto something interesting here! The possessive style.

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

#295

Post by OJFord »

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…

> Double infinitives ("to try to eat") getting changed to an infinitive and conjunction ("to try and eat").

Or worse, 'to try eat', 'to go get', etc.

It's very American to my ear, but it's certainly invading.

Another corruption triple like that is to do something 'accidentally' / 'by accident' / 'on accident'.

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

#296

Post by SJC_Hacker »

wil421 wrote: post #240
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English being an amalgamated language and thus uniquely flexible is part of its power. We have options in style choices many languages formally don’t permit, e.g. when to italicise or, if quoting, whether to “exclude punctuation”, or “include it.” (As well as comma use.) As a fellow French speaker, I think these are strengths other languages could gain from. Couriel or email (or e-mail)? Speaker’s choice. Same for po…

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...

English is a Germanic language with a Latin alphabet, as spoken by Celts, after being ruled by people from France who were originally from Norway (or maybe Denmark)

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

#297

Post by sjm »

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…

When I lived in Bordeaux I remember seeing billboards basically advising young people to not use "txt speak" and instead write "real French" to preserve the language.

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

#298

Post by MarkusWandel »

YawningAngel wrote: post #270
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...

It's not a conjugation issue. "Champagne" is letter-for-letter identical in both languages, but pronounced differently for phonotactic reasons

It's a typical French loanword in German too: "Champagner" isn't pronounced with standard German prounciation rules. Even localized ones, e.g. in my childhood a sidewalk was called a "Trottoir" in the French pronunciation. For some reason nobody gets exited about French loanwords.

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

#300

Post by dylan604 »

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)

> Tree leaves (leaves from a tree)

or it could be the single tree is vacating the area

> Trees leaves (same but from more than one variety of tree)

or multiple trees are vacating the area

we could equally turn edge into a verb as well. so now we have a whole other meaning outside of an apostrophe

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