Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by marcellus23 » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

oersted wrote: post #281

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…

> This has historically been the philosophy of English linguists

It's not unique to English linguists, it's a tenet of modern linguistics in general. A language is defined by the way people actually speak. If that's influenced by a central organization, fine, but that does not contradict descriptivism at all. Someone studying a language should always study the way the language is spoken by real people, using prescriptivist sources as supplementary sources of information where needed.

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

#312

Post by diego_moita » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #292

diego_moita wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, ASALE[1] (Association of Academies of Spanish Language) is already a cross-national body that negotiates these rules among several countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Academies_of_th...

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

#313

Post by hosh » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

tivert wrote: post #215

hosh wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinyin is pretty good at rendering Manderin in a Latin script. Can you elaborate on what you mean by “English-friendly”?

> Pinyin is pretty good at rendering Manderin in a Latin script. It's pretty good for Mandarin speakers . It's terrible for English speakers. > Can you elaborate on what you mean by “English-friendly”? English friendly is something that will produce reasonably-close approximate pronunciations by an English reader without any extra foreign-language training. Basically, something that prioritizes following existing Eng…

Wades-Giles is closer to English-friendly, but it has a lot of flaws. It has no notion of intonations.

I think there is also the issue of cultural dominance. "English-friendly" means the foreign language is morphed to better suit English speakers. It could go the other way if Mandarin is the dominant trade language.

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

#314

Post by complianceowl » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

saghm wrote: post #302

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…

> 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]. For whatever reason, it drives me crazy when I hear people refer to Pizzeria Uno as "Uno's". I've had conversations about it multi…

I love Uno's.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

nobody9999 wrote: post #305

schroeding wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I wouldn't agree with that. In Germany, we had multiple top-down orthographic reforms in the past (e.g. Rechtschreibreform 1996, had many many significant, brand-new changes to make spelling and speaking more consistent) which were pretty forced, i.e. was not organic at all. I'm not saying it was bad, I like the current state of the German language - but it was not organic or democratic. Germanys equivalent to Th…

>And there is no true way to "vote with your feet" if you get punished for violating the official orthography. Ich hat das nicht verstanden. Ich kann mit meinem fusse wahlen. Wie konnte ich fur schlecte Deutsch bestraft werden? Ich wohne nicht in Deutschland. Und ja, meinem Deutsch ist sehr schlecht. Das stimmt. Kommen sie damit klar. Edit: Fixed (without really improving) my terrible german.

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by cdrini » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

sigmoid10 wrote: post #247

cdrini wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha within reason!! I want to see eg authors just introduce new words in books, like Shakespeare. New words shouldn't generally make the language less internally consistent (goodness knows English has enough of a problem with that as it is!). I mean new words like... "He was a carrapticious old fellow. Always alert, and, despite his old age, had the mischievous sparkling eyes of a boy who has just told a bad joke"…

But who's to say which new words are "acceptable" and which aren't? Of course if you ask old people they will give these Shakespearean answers, but they are not the ones defining the future of a language. It's the young generation. And they have a very different approach to creating new words. Why should their new words be worth less? And the example in the original post is actually the worst kind according to your d…

I think the people decide; if folks like a certain word, they'll start using it, creating traction. A natural selection of words of sorts. Then the dictionaries, being non-prescriptive, will have to add those words since they're needed to understand common parlance.

And completely agree about young generations, I've actually been super pleased at how many new words gen z is creating! I feel like the previous few generations created way fewer words. I disagree with things like introducing inconsistent spellings like "lyk" in terms of adopting that as a standard, because it just makes the language a headache to learn. But creating words for things that don't have existing words (like carrapticious in my other example), or even creating new sort of word variations which kind of grow/evolve into their own words (like rizz) seem like a nice expressive way of extending language. (I'm a bit more mixed on the value of the latter, though).

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

#317

Post by Wytwwww » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

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.

> As much as we need someone to define what is http, TCP/IP or Posix we also need someone

Why? Humans are almost infinitely more adaptable and capable of dynamically changing their behaviour compared to computer programs. Learning to understand/speak a new pseudo dialect of your native language isn't particularly hard. Millions of people do that near effortlessly on a daily basis (especially in many German speaking areas).

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

#318

Post by nicbou » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:27 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…

Coming from Quebec, I understand why people are worried about their language being strangled out and their culture dying with it. For Quebec this has always been a threat.

I live in Germany now. There are 10-15 times more German speakers in the DACH area than there are French speakers in Quebec. Even then, it’s weird that companies no longer bother translating their ads and slogans for the German-speaking market. It’s somewhat sad that every culture is slowly becoming a vaguely American, California-based culture.

Language and culture are intertwined. I feel that with the globalisation of both, something of value is lost. It’s only right to feel concerned about it.

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

#319

Post by int_19h » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

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…

In Russian, the name of the restaurant did include the final "s", but without the apostrophe, so I don't think that's consistent.

Note though that in German, "-s" is also a genitive suffix, it's just the spelling that's different here.

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

#320

Post by lcouturi » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 6:28 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…

'Courriel' was coined by French Canadian translator André Clas, not by the Académie Française. The Office québécois de la langue française successfully promoted its usage in Quebec in the 90s and the Académie Française unsuccessfully tried to do the same in France.

'Courriel' is still commonly used by French Canadians, but indeed it was never widely adopted by France. As a French Canadian, I usually use 'courriel", though the anglicism 'e-mail' is also quite commonly used. Can't say I've ever seen anyone use 'mél', tho.