Germans Decry Influence of English As 'Idiot's Apostrophe' Gets Official Approval (theguardian.com) 153
A recent relaxation of rules around apostrophes in German, permitting their use in possessive forms like "Eva's Blumenladen," has sparked criticism from traditionalists and concerns over the influence of English on the German language. The Guardian reports: Establishments that feature their owners' names, with signs like "Rosi's Bar" or "Kati's Kiosk" are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. The correct spelling, therefore, would be "Rosis Bar," "Katis Kiosk," or, as in the title of a recent viral hit, Barbaras Rhabarberbar. However, guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph ("idiot's apostrophe") has become so widespread that it is permissible -- as long as it separates the genitive 's' within a proper name.
The new edition of the Council for German Orthography's style guide, which prescribes grammar use at schools and public bodies in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, lists "Eva's Blumenladen" (Eva's Flower Shop) and "Peter's Taverne" (Peter's Tavern) as usable alternatives, though "Eva's Brille" ("Eva's glasses") remains incorrect. The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer's apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an 's' is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun ("a kilo of potato's"). The new set of rules came into effect in July, and the council said a loosening of the rules in 1996 meant that "Rosi's Bar" had strictly speaking not been incorrect for almost three decades. Yet over the past few days, German newspapers and social media networks have seen a pedants' revolt against the loosening of grammar rules.
The new edition of the Council for German Orthography's style guide, which prescribes grammar use at schools and public bodies in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, lists "Eva's Blumenladen" (Eva's Flower Shop) and "Peter's Taverne" (Peter's Tavern) as usable alternatives, though "Eva's Brille" ("Eva's glasses") remains incorrect. The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer's apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an 's' is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun ("a kilo of potato's"). The new set of rules came into effect in July, and the council said a loosening of the rules in 1996 meant that "Rosi's Bar" had strictly speaking not been incorrect for almost three decades. Yet over the past few days, German newspapers and social media networks have seen a pedants' revolt against the loosening of grammar rules.
Take it a step further please (Score:4, Interesting)
Make den der das and die all interchangeable, itâ(TM)s confusing trying to learn German as a native English speaker.
Why do words need genders?
Re: (Score:2)
We could do away with a lot of baggage in English too. Why have fly flew flown when we could have fly flied flied. I remember hearing about a radio sportscaster saying some hitter 'flied out', that is, hit a fly ball that was caught. So, just make fly as in what airplanes do be the same as fly when hitting a fly ball. And do the same for all the other strong verbs, like swim, see, run, etc. Oh, and why put an s after a verb in 3rd person singular, make it I run, you run, he run, they run.
Lerners of Eng
Re:Take it a step further please (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
German is both versatile and economical of vocabulary when considering flies: "Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach."
Is this BS about Buffalo?
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
Very common, isn't it? Trying to lower the bar while learning, just tick the box, scratch the surface, instead of putting in the effort to actually learn something end-to-end.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As a non-native English speaker I don't think we really need this. Every language has irregular verbs, and it's just a matter of memory and habit. What would make it a lot easier to learn English would be to have a phonetic writing system. In most languages you can tell how a word is pronounced by the way it is written down, you might get some accents and emphases wrong, but the spoken word would be recognizable. No such thing with the English language.
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:5, Funny)
Why do words need genders?
Oh the many reasons:
1. Because they've always had gender.
2. To add a little spice to puns, jokes, and other wordplay.
3. The best reason of all: to piss off the gender-weirdos in the Anglosphere.
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:4, Insightful)
Well genders are painful. Or something.
There are, of course, plenty of people—including many women—who have no problem being addressed as “guys,” think the word has evolved to be entirely gender-neutral, and don't see a reason to change their usage. But others aren’t so sure.
In my reporting I heard from several people who said that the word is particularly troubling for trans and gender-nonconforming people. “As a transgender woman, I consciously began trying to stop using guys some years ago,” says Brad Ward, a college counselor at a high school in Atherton, California. She added, “When I’m included with a group that is called guys, there’s some pain, since it takes me back to my male days in a way that I’d rather not go.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Doesn't matter how you use language or what your intentions are. People who want to be offended will find a way to be offended by it. Being oppressed is a virtue now, get with the times dude.
How are they going to rage in the news? (Score:4, Insightful)
If English is sanitized, cleaned up, de-cluttered, or simplified how will the media write articles which
- use softening language if a crime is committed by a media favored person or group
- use incendiary language if a crime is committed by a person or group hated by the media
Two quotes from - https://www.worthwhileconsulti... [worthwhileconsulting.com]
The dangers of “softening language”
"For example, Ghislaine M is often described as “sourcing” girls who were “abused.” This softening language does not accurately frame her (alleged) crimes the way “sex trafficking” and “raped” does. It makes her actions seem less intense, less concrete, less horrible."
"Softening language is often used to humanize wrongdoers, and shift the focus from their harmful impact to compassion for their experience. It is a subtle mechanism to maintain current power structures and avoid accountability."
This last point is important because the media is doing a lazy disservice by whitewashing via softening words one political party, one gender, one X group and not any other groups. Suggestion here is that they report the facts trying to use equal language regardless of the incident, group or person involved. ...
Consder the defniition of pelt (Score:2)
I remember reading a news article where the reporter's kid learned the definition for the word 'pelt' as 'to throw something which hits a person'.
The news article then went on to mention that pelt also means animal skin, as in a beaver pelt, which had importance in the settling of Canada and the USA.
Is this were it's headed, where inconvenient words and inconvenient word definitions are systemically removed from what is taught in schools, appropriate for work conversations, in the media and books?
Words do g
Re: (Score:2)
This phenomenon is not something you can regulate with orthography. Enemies of truth will always find a way to bend language because one of the beautiful aspects of language is that it can be bent and manipulated artfully.
If you were indeed able to remove the mere possibility of abusing language, you'd simply kill all of literature in the process.
What needs to happen is for people who do that to receive public shaming and excluding from proper society until they do better.
Re:Take it a step further please (Score:5, Funny)
itâ(TM)s
Ah... a classic case of the idiot's apostrophe.
Re: (Score:2)
+1
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
A classic case of apple keyboard.
Re: (Score:2)
"idiot" and "apple user"... why are you redundant?
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations, you got the joke!
Re: (Score:2)
itâ(TM)s very confusing to me
Incormation coding (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do words need genders?
They clearly don't (viz: English), but can be used for denser information coding.
A language can have few words and encode a larger number of meanings using stems such as masculine and feminine.
To take a synthetic example, you could have a numeric stem to indicate size of a (piece of) wood: the word for twig would be "one-wood", branch is "two-wood", limb is "three-wood", and trunk/log could be "four-wood". Applying the numeric stem to words allows multiple concepts to be encoded in fewer words.
Gendered nouns operate the same way - it lets people communicate more meanings using fewer words. In information theory, it would be considered a more dense encoding.
Italian: La capitale (= the city that is the official center of government of a country) / il capitale (= large amount of money)
English is a bit odd, right around the year 1000 the Normans settled on the coast of England, and the Saxons were the original inhabitants, and the two cultures needed to communicate for trade and such, so they both learned the basics of each others' languages. Any person (either side) only learned the basics of the other language, only what was needed for trade, and the result was a sort of new, simpler system, and English grew out of that. (Fact check me if I've gotten this wrong.)
So basically, English as a language is a) fairly new, and b) started as a simpler language used by two cultures to communicate for trade.
Re: Incormation coding (Score:2)
But there are no rules to say which word is which gender.
You just need to learn it for each word.
Why is a fork masculine and a spoon feminine?
Gabel and LÃffel
Why are cows and pigs feminine but goats and chickens are masculine?
Re: (Score:2)
I see slashdot doesn't know how to encode an o with umlauts.
Re: (Score:2)
Never has and never will ;).
Re: (Score:2)
Why is a fork masculine and a spoon feminine?
Well, when two utensils really love each other...
Re: (Score:2)
And a knife (Messer) is neuter
Re: Incormation coding (Score:2)
"Why are cows ... feminine?"
Did you really just ask that?
Re: (Score:3)
The question is valid as cow as well as Kuh is colloquially used to refer to the whole species. Steers and heifers are usually referred to as cows too, unless the gender is actually relevant to the discussion.
A funny discrepancy between English and German, by the way: A steer is "Ochse" in German, whereas a bull is called "Stier".
Re: (Score:2)
You could have a numeric stem to indicate size of a (piece of) wood: the word for twig would be "one-wood", branch is "two-wood", limb is "three-wood" and "four-wood"
Conversely, you could add even more words
such as "Fleegle", "Bingo", "Drooper", and "Snorky".
This idea is giving me four-wood.
Also I want an ice cream dessert for some reason.
La La La, la-la-la La!
Re: (Score:3)
Sometimes I wonder how this sort of thing affects the way people think and listen.
In Japanese they don't have gendered pronouns, and generally speaking the language is quite efficient. When people speak they often omit a lot of context words that English speakers wouldn't. The result is faster communication (speed-runners often play the Japanese version of a game because the dialogue is shorter), but also a need to concentrate and follow what is being said more carefully than in English. Your brain has to d
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
Because the gender allows your brain to ingest more information with a single word. It's like a word metadata. Enriches information and provides clarity. Just because you don't like genders (for political reasons, I presume?) doesn't mean that everyone else would like to have a dumbed-down, bland language, too. In fact, most Indo-European, South American and Norther-African languages are gendered.
Re: (Score:3)
Wrong, it can encode the gender of the subject or give you context about the expected gender roles in society.
The meaning may have been lost in some cases, but in general it can be deduced.
What "Expected Gender role(s) in Society" does a Faucet or a Chair have?
Gender assignment to words is arbitrary, capricious, almost wholly random, and downright confounding to non-native speakers.
Nothing more.
Re: (Score:3)
The same reason as for any grammar rules, to reduce ambiguity. The garden path sentence "the horse raced past the barn fell" wouldn't work in German, among other reasons because the barn (die Scheune) is feminine, while the horse (das Pferd) is neutral. English is actually a weirdo among the Indo-European languages for having lost the grammatical gender. In fact, of all the IE languages in Europe it is the only one without.
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
English language hasn't lost its genders completely. For example, personal pronouns are gendered, very similarly to other IE languages.
Re: (Score:2)
GRAMMATICAL gender, not gender.
You know how table in French is feminine but bag is masculine. English doesn't have gender for nouns.
Re: Take it a step further please (Score:2)
Just use the article that people use when they don'want to misgender anyone. I don't know what it is... May be dir? Or de? The latter case would put it too close to English, though.
Practice more; complain less... (Score:2)
If it has reached the point where the RdR has gone with a "fine, do apostrophes" position German speak
The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer's apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an 's' is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun ("a kilo of potato's").
It's always been potatoes.
Re: (Score:2)
Should we write "two Bs" or "two B's"? Or should we add an "e" as in "potatoes"? Two Bes.
Re: (Score:2)
How about half a bee?
Re: The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Once English speakers learn that the apostrophe isn't just for contractions and can be used before the s to indicate the possessive, they then apply that knowledge while forgetting the bit about it being for the possessive.
I see it on store signs, billboards, and Slashdot posts for pluralization. It's extremely irritating.
Re: (Score:2)
The way I understood how the possessive 's came to be is that it actually is an abbreviation, of "his", "hers" or "their(s)".
Re: The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
Kartoffel or kartoffeln
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a common mistake made far too often these days. The irony being that while Germans are struggling with the encroachment of apostrophes being used to signal the possessive, English-speaking countries (notably the United States) are struggling with the improper use of apostrophes to create plurals.
Re: The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
Technically, you can use an apostrophe for elision, so potato's still works as a possessive with the "e" elided.
Re: The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
"Plural" I meant to say, not "possessive".
Re: The English use apostrophies for plurls? (Score:2)
I've seen it many times, but I didn't know it was correct
Re: (Score:2)
I see it used usually by people who have trouble with their, they're and there.
Refer - Anglo Saxon Chronicle (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Having read the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, covering hundreds of years of England, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, Arcadia (?) France occupied by the English, etc. you will find that there were centuries of feudal lords conquering adjoining lands, imposing their own language, adopting some of the local language and mixing cultures.
Throw in the many times the northern parts of the British Isles were conquered by Danes and other Norsemen, the Roman's conquering the south up to
German's, you're in good company (Score:3)
English speaker's don't know how to use apostrophe's either!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's your point? The article is not about spoken language, it's talking about apostrophes, which are by definition *written*.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: German's, you're in good company (Score:2)
Re: German's, you're in good company (Score:2)
How do you know?
Re: (Score:3)
W'e shou'ld jus't ad'd it where t' fu'ck ev'r. Fu'ck Ev'r might even make a good elven village in a fantasy novel.
At least English doesn't do this (Score:2)
In spite of the fact that far too many native-English-speakers make a lot of cringe-worthy mistakes, English doesn't assign gender to inanimate objects. Checkmate.
Re: (Score:3)
With some exceptions like "ship".
Germans decry influence of English? (Score:3)
English is German with a French overlay. The other overlay is Norse, which is also German.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Celt (Score:2)
There's also some Celt thrown in there. Or is that from Norse as well? I can't remember.
Re: Celt (Score:2)
It's a West Germanic language with Celtic syntax, a Norse (North Germanic) core, and a large borrowed Romance (largely Latin, Occitan, and French) vocabulary, with some other vocab sprinkled in for flavor.
Re: Germans decry influence of English? (Score:5, Funny)
Germans decrying the influence of English give me schadenfreude.
Re: (Score:2)
Obligatory: Ze drem vil finali kum tru (Score:4, Funny)
Ze drem vil finali kum tru. [upenn.edu]
Linguistic humor, English spelling reform
Source: An old chestnut. In its globalized incarnation below, via Steven Gearhart.
English in the Future
Directors at Daimler Benz and Chrysler have announced an agreement to adopt English as the preferred language for communications, rather than German, which was another possibility.
As part of the negotiations, directors at Chrysler conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and have accepted a five-year phase-in plan. In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Also, the hard "c" will be replased with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but komputers have one less letter.
There will be growing kompany enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.
In the third year, DaimlerKhrysler akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible.
DaimlerKhrysler will enkourage the removal of double letters, whish have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"'s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps sush as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" by "v".
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be droped from vords kontaining "o", and similar shanges vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis, and employes vil find it ezi to kommunikat viz eash ozer.
Ov kors al supliers vil be expekted to us zis for all busines komunikation via DaimlerKhrysler.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Full Circle: It came from German (Score:5, Interesting)
So don't think of this as corrupting german, it's a feature improvement from the original that we came up with after almost 2,000 years of patches!
Re: (Score:3)
Europe vs English (Score:2)
English regarding any other language, slang, or new word whatsoever: "We'll take it."
Pedant's Revolt (Score:2)
News for Nerds? That's a big 10-4, good buddy.
Its [sic] not about English (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought the "idiot's apostrophe" would be "it's" for possession (or lack thereof for the contraction), as in: "The dog licked it's paw". Intuitively this actually makes some sense, as it's parallel to "Spot's paw". But native English speakers might not realize the division is clear: possessive nouns have an apostrophe, while possessive pronouns ("his", "hers", "mine") do not.
Why don't verbs date pronouns? Because the pronouns can get possessive. Also, it gets expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Note: "mine" should have been "my". "Mine" is a possessive adjective, not a pronoun.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm way too much of a native speaker to clearly categorize this type of word--"hers" is also not a possessive pronoun. My bad.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be the English equivalent, yes.
Hey! (Score:5, Funny)
It should be the idiots' apostrophe. Not the idiot's apostrophe. There's more than one of us.
Re: (Score:2)
It should be the idiots' apostrophe. Not the idiot's apostrophe. There's more than one of us.
It's fine. Most of us idiots don't know how to write a plural possessive correctly anyway.
Why didn't they revolt earlier? (Score:2)
Back when they did away with the double-s character 'ÃY' or removing a third 's' in a row in a compound word.
Ironic Since English Is A Germanic Language (Score:2)
Excuse my French (Score:2)
Excuse my French, but the Deutschen volks' schadenfreude is like France's own "grammar Geheime Staatspolizei" as described:
https://www.languagemagazine.c... [languagemagazine.com]
An interesting video about how English lost genders is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Progress as German evolves...???
JoshK.
Sticklers (Score:2)
Quid Pro Quo (Score:2)
You'll let you drop the apostrophe if you introduce spaces in your language.
Legislating language protection (Score:3)
If you feel you need to formally protect your language via legislation or via some other official manner... you've already lost the battle.
This is what I usually tell German speakers (Score:2)
to make them mad:
Modern English is derived from Anglo-Saxon. It's the version of German that has evolved.
And then if they're not mad enough, I tell them I speak Dutch, which is exactly like German but without the needlessly complicated grammar (added bonus: this also makes the Dutch mad).
Great thinking (Score:2)
In Dutch it's endemic now, too (Score:3)
Shakes cane, "when I was a boy", etc....
In Dutch, this has become the thing people do now as well. Being a Germanic sister language of German, Dutch also does/should not use the apostrophe in this sense, but people do it anyway. Then again, a language is a living thing, and in the end, it is what people speak and write. I can live with this.
Re: (Score:2)
>>a pedants' revolt
Glad we never have that on /.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I object to that characterization, it's a semi-incompetent translation of a politically motivated and expurgated translation of a politically motivated and expurgated translation of a semi-incompetent translation.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milton (Score:2)
English has no such problem; it has taken up words from a vast number of other languages and is the better for it.
It's neither better nor worse, but you might imagine how a bastard tongue of at least threw successively conquering peoples, that might rightly be called a pidgeon and not a real language by some lights, would be discomfitting to a people who have an actual language academy in charge of their words.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the language is called a pidgin. A pidgeon is a bird.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milto (Score:2)
A pigeon is a bird. I have no idea what a pidgeon is, but Rebecca Pidgeon is an actress.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milt (Score:2)
Shakespeare probably called a pigeon a pidgeon.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milto (Score:2)
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milton (Score:2)
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, before English was even a language.
English is maybe 1500 years old, and is now quite different
Re: (Score:3)
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milto (Score:2)
And the New Testament was written in Greek.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think Milton will be making any distinction between English speakers and Spanish speakers as it goes through Florida.
Re: English is the language of Shakespeare, Milton (Score:2)
I have read Shakespeare in original and I can say that he makes many orthographic and grammatic mistakes. /s
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Re: Why? (Score:2)
And grammar Vichys.