551–560 of 576 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is because it's just giving in to the habit of some people.
So I suppose you never gave in and you still vehemently write "bureau" instead of "Büro"? It's just spelling. Also, please check your old Duden, Regel 16b, you will be surprised.
But Eva's Blumenladen is a foreign spelling of German words.
Maybe English/Globish should go in the opposite direction. Apostrophes, at least for the genitive case, are awfully annoying: curly/non-curly, extra character, not pronounced, uncouth... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Criticism
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is because it's just giving in to the habit of some people.
There's an obvious upside for those people. Is there any obvious downside for everyone else?
Additionally the spelling with an apostrophe needs more space therefore more material to print and print onto. A waste of resources.
It's like the Deppen-Bindestrich and ruins the compactness of German spelling.
Maybe english should adapt body back for backpack in exchange.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not as much as you would think. Russian has terminal de-voicing; so /d/ softens to a /t/, hence сад = /sat/. (Sort of; actually it's something in between, but the shift is noticable). And /l/ palatizes (becomes /lj/) before both е and ё, as in самолёт. (Actually the /j/ is built into ё of course, but somehow it seems helpful to recognize the commonality of the sounds when realized after /l/ - basically е becomes more…
The interesting part here is /lj/ vs /lʲj/.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
This sounds very Midwestern to me. Where I come from that would happen a lot. It wasn't necessarily that people didn't know the real name of the place. It functioned more like an inflection that helps to distinguish between the company, and a specific storefront operated by that company. Compare it to the distinction between "Alice" and "Alice's". Alice is the person, and Alice's is her house. For example, you you'd…
Fred Meyer is also not "Fred Meyer's" but at least I can see why that would happen.
Then you have Vons, which used to be "Von's Grocery Company." I guess you go in there now and there's just more than one guy named Von in the store.
Ralphs also dropped the apostrophe.
Albertson's is now "Albertsons."
Kinda funny it seems like Americans are dropping the apostrophes. The exact opposite of what the article is talking about.
At least nobody is saying "Let's go to Costco's."
Also in the PNW, everybody called it "Penny's" for as long as I can remember.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realize that what people actually speak (in France) differs quite a bit from the Académie Française. email vs. courriel for example is a good one, but you'll stand out in most places if you don't know l'argot (slang). I don't think an English standardization would change much in how people actually speak.
Well, loanwords is slightly different that completely inconsistent spelling - wouldn't you say? Imagine some would stick with original "bonjour" (Qubec), other more progressive would simplify to "bojur" and whatnote. You have the same with "colour" and "color". Or "night" and "nite". From my observatio where you have some language authority there is at least consisten spelling (and english spelling is all over the pl…
en_US vs. en_GB
fr_CA vs fr_FR
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
What a comment... The person you responded to is right. If you start mixing in "they" you're just confusing the listener, because they will assume you're now talking about some different people. I wouldn't have the patience to listen to somebody who speaks in that matter and deliberately makes their words cryptic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds very Midwestern to me. Where I come from that would happen a lot. It wasn't necessarily that people didn't know the real name of the place. It functioned more like an inflection that helps to distinguish between the company, and a specific storefront operated by that company. Compare it to the distinction between "Alice" and "Alice's". Alice is the person, and Alice's is her house. For example, you you'd…
People call Safeway "Safeway's" all the time. This one kinda drives me crazy. Fred Meyer is also not "Fred Meyer's" but at least I can see why that would happen. Then you have Vons, which used to be "Von's Grocery Company." I guess you go in there now and there's just more than one guy named Von in the store. Ralphs also dropped the apostrophe. Albertson's is now "Albertsons." Kinda funny it seems like Americans are…
This makes me really curious how quickly German has actually evolved over time. My assumptions would be entirely informed from extrapolating from historical context and not knowing anything about German. So there was probably a lot of linguistic diversity before unification in 1870, then there would have been a standardization effort started by Bismarck (favoring the dialect predominantly spoken in Prussia) which wou…
Some first standardisations started with the beginning of the printed media, especially Luther's bible translation, then later printed grammar manuals. In the 19th century newspapers and publishing had an impact which streamlined the written word, becoming "Standard German" which through these influences is rather descended from central Germany, not Prussia.
AFAIK the "high" in high German doesn’t come from class but from geographical position - high is more upriver than the low countries in the north.
As for oral dialects: There was no concerted campaign against dialects like in France as far as I know; here it is actual more of a class thing. Again the media plays a role: the rise of radio and television in the latter half of the 20th century has a harmonising effect, deemphasising dialects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My grandmother would indeed refer to shopping at “WalMart’s” or “Penney’s”. Maybe a regional thing (she was from central PA)?
The stores really were called Penneys (no idiot apostrophe present) until being gradually rebranded in the 70s and 80s. some examples: 80s: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Downtown_Seattle_Pen... 70s: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FW_Woolworth,_Penney... 60s: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penneys,_Eastland_Ma... 50s: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_1_46896_... 40s: http…