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

#351

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

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…

No, it is used to signal the person's gender doesn't matter. Being angry about other people not fixating on gender by demanding everyone always explicitly define it with every pronoun is used as sexism signaling, which is what you're doing.

You don't know why other people choose to use the words they do, yet you presume the worst and accuse people of being insincere and lacking virtue despite (and because of) their polite behavior, regardless of their true beliefs, when it's actually none of your business to police and judge their grammar.

I'd rather work with someone who purposefully signals they have virtue than someone who purposefully signals they're a sexist asshole, any day.

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

#352

Post by crazygringo » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:09 PM UTC

thangalin wrote: post #337

UNICODE and ASCII apostrophes are a bit absurd. For KeenQuotes[1], my library to automatically curl straight quotes, there's an Apostrophe type that defines variations on how to convert a straight apostrophe to a curled one. The main issue is that most suggestions are to use ’, which isn't semantically correct[2], and at one point Michael Everson noted, "the alphabetic property should be restored to U+02BC"[3].…

But Unicode code points aren't supposed to represent semantics, they're supposed to represent... well, "abstract characters" that are either glyphs or get combined into glyphs, which can have multiple (ambiguous) semantic meanings.

That's why there aren't two different period characters to represent the end of a sentence vs. a decimal point, or two different em dashes where one represents a pause while the other comes at the end of dialog to indicate the sentence was interrupted (literally the opposite of a pause, it's being cut off).

So since the apostrophe and the right single quote are visually identical, Unicode stays consistent in recommending that they be the same character. The name Unicode gives to a character is intended to represent one of its semantic meanings, not all of them.

(Unicode does have plenty of visually identical characters, but they generally belong to totally different languages, like the English "o" and the Greek omicron "ο".)

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

#353

Post by int_19h » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #268

dqv wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just this morning I came across a guy called Mr Techpedia on YouTube and I was really surprised because I heard a lot of English phrases but also phrases that are in a different language or a dialect of English I’m not familiar with. It was actually really cool. It also reminds me of a time when I heard someone codeswitch from US Midwestern English to Malaysian English - there was a clear difference in word choice an…

I am Spanish native, but the way I structure my sentence seems a google translation from chinese. People around me often don't understand the meaning, so I have to speak slower to structure my sentence in a more proper Spanish way. I suppose languages evolve around the way their corresponding population brains work. People can still learn other languages, or be native to other languages, but there is a language way t…

There is no evidence for "biological inclination" towards certain languages. Take a Spanish kid and raise them on Chinese, and they'll speak it natively just fine, and vice versa.

However, natural languages evolve naturally, which means that they don't just suddenly randomly change, and that change is very gradual. So things tend to get stuck in historically-motivated local maximums that can be very different for different languages because of their different histories.

There are some plausible theories around biologically motivated language features, but this tends to be about the environment - e.g. some sounds seem to be more common in languages spoken in high-altitude areas.

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

#354

Post by gavindean90 » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #291

jcranmer wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 in…

There are purists that complain. Importantly, we don’t let them edit the dictionaries.

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

#355

Post by int_19h » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

lenerdenator wrote: post #238

BitwiseFool wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I jokingly suggest that, by definition, the only person who uses English properly and speaks without an accent is the King.

If it's English because the King speaks it, how come the most famous document written in (modern) English tells the King to take a hike?

But the King is basically German. ~

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

#356

Post by vineyardmike » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

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...

0. The book you linked to is a joke.

1. You can’t take things language related from France at face value - they probably have a bias. They have a strong cultural pride and protection over their language. They also have a strong history of political agendas pushing their language as the “international” language. I say this as a non-French speaker of the French language, and I mean no disrespect to the French people. It’s just a cultural element formed over hundreds of years of government policy.

2. The origins of English is not French, but there are many words in English derived from French. But today they’re English words, with a French history. There are many more words that are not French in origin, so it’s quite disingenuous to call English an “incorrect” or “mispronounced” French. Why is it not an “evolved” or “improved” French? (See point 1).

3. English is conjugated, it’s just different than French. “I am, you are, he is”. “I look, you look, he looks”. Or more obviously “I jump, I jumped, I am jumping”. Most of the French-origin words are also probably not verbs but nouns. That said, I have no data to back that up.

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

#357

Post by metaphor » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #244

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, dictionaries and governments are just writing down what's already happening in the language. In a way language is one of the only truly democratic institutions. We all vote for new words and new pronunciations by using them or not using them. The collective action of all these choices is the language.

That's not always accurate, many of these government bodies fight the evolution of the vernacular and suppress dialects or loanwords.

This.

For example, in the Mariana Islands, there are two independent othography committees that have been low-key duking it out over an indigenous language with less than 50k native speakers; see these brief highlights[1; p. 11 onward] from a recognized scholar of the language for a small sampling.

In the CNMI, the language is routinely spoken (i.e. English is a second language in most households) and the CNMI's othography committee has taken a conservative approach, focusing on simple written rules that capture sound as spoken, and biasing its orthography towards serving as an optimal language preservation mechanism...which makes objective sense given its target population is overwhelmingly fluent.

In Guam, however, the spoken language was nearing generational extinction largely driven by American colonial influence not dissimilar to the going concern of native Hawaiians. Ironically, Guam's better funded orthography committee has taken a much more liberal approach in establishing new written rules and spellings (e.g. CHamoru is the official spelling of the language/people written into law as of 2017; yes, the letter CH is now entirely capitalized in a proper noun; previously Chamoru, as opposed to the prevailing and historically consistent Chamorro in the CNMI).

There's also been a recent resurgence of language adoption by the native youth cohort on Guam largely motivated by grassroots sociopolitical identity movement. This hipster generation has taken it upon themselves to replace an ever growing number of established words adopted during colonial rule hundreds of years ago with all but forgotten words of the ancient tongue...which I suppose is fair game as language evolution goes, but it's gotten to a point of irony where these changes are throwing off the elder native-speaking generation responsible for passing on the language to their progeny, e.g. family (English) --> familia (Spanish adopted) --> manggåfa (antiquated is the new hip). In contrast, no such shift in zeitgeist is happening in the CNMI.

[1] https://people.ucsc.edu/~schung/orthog_differences.pdf#page=...

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

#358

Post by int_19h » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:13 PM UTC

graypegg wrote: post #186

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... )

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…

FWIW while comma vs period for decimal fractions is a point of significant variability globally, the use of comma to group digits is fairly uncommon, whereas period is universally understood as a decimal separator even in countries where comma is normally used for that purpose (thanks to calculators and computers). And, on the other hand, space-separated groups are self-explanatory for those used to comma for that purpose. So using spaces for grouping + period for fractions is indeed the way to go to maximum readability worldwide.

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

#359

Post by slobiwan » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

sgerenser wrote: post #340

xp84 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> calling it Uno's isn't inconsistent with how we talk about Walmart's stores calling it Uno's isn't inconsistent with how we talk about Walmart's stores or Google's website No, calling it "Uno Corp's pizzeria" would be the equivalent. Nobody says they're "Going down to Walmart's" or "doing some research on Google's."

My grandmother would indeed refer to shopping at “WalMart’s” or “Penney’s”. Maybe a regional thing (she was from central PA)?

Same in Iowa. I grew up talking about going to Penny's (as in JC Penny) or Sernett's or Gibson's (local department stores).

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

#360

Post by burningChrome » Wed, Oct 09, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

sgerenser wrote: post #340

xp84 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> calling it Uno's isn't inconsistent with how we talk about Walmart's stores calling it Uno's isn't inconsistent with how we talk about Walmart's stores or Google's website No, calling it "Uno Corp's pizzeria" would be the equivalent. Nobody says they're "Going down to Walmart's" or "doing some research on Google's."

My grandmother would indeed refer to shopping at “WalMart’s” or “Penney’s”. Maybe a regional thing (she was from central PA)?

Midwesterner here.

My family always used "Penny's" to refer to JC Penny. They also continued to refer to Macy's as Dayton's for years after they had changed their name because the locations were all the same, just the name had changed.

Its funny because I too always felt saying "Penny's" was a regional thing, but more of Midwestern thing.