Linguistic body has relaxed rules on use of apostrophe to show possession, not traditionally correct in German
  • talEnglish
    34·
    1 month ago

    “There is a long tradition of conservative circles fretting about international influences on the German languages,” said Stefanowitsch. “It used to be French, and now it’s mainly English”.

    Heh.

    The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

    –James Nicoll

    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.

    Hmm.

    So how do they deal with the more-complex cases?

    https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/whats-the-rule-for-doing-a-possessive-after-the-word-s/

    Singular nouns ending in S

    Rule 1: In general, you form a possessive singular noun (both proper and common) by adding an apostrophe and the letter S to the end of the word.

    • the flower’s petals

    • Riley’s car

    That’s simple enough. It’s when the car belongs to a person named Chris, or we’re talking about the petals of a crocus that the rules get blurry. Most experts and guides say you should add an apostrophe and an S to both proper and common nouns to make them possessive even when they end in S. So, using the examples above, it would be:

    * Chris’s car

    • the crocus’s petals

    Not everyone agrees with this method, however, and some, such as the Associated Press Stylebook, nod in favor of adding only an apostrophe to make a proper noun possessive, such as:

    • Chris’ car

    • Dickens’ novels

    To add even more confusion, AP Style also has an exception if the word following the possessive starts with an S, stating that in those cases only the apostrophe should be added. So it would be:

    • Texas’s people

    Texas’ streams

    In 2019, the AP raised quite the ruckus when they tweeted that they were considering adding an S after the apostrophe for singular proper nouns, as in Mavis Staples’s album or Martha Reeves’s concert. To date, no changes have been made, but as you can see, it’s an ever-evolving, highly volatile topic.

    Plural nouns ending in S

    Rule 2: Plural nouns, on the other hand, generally don’t get an extra S, just an apostrophe. Most experts suggest you form the plural form of the word first, then add the apostrophe.

    For example:

    • the Joneses’ house

    • the classes’ rules

    Most say possessive words should generally read as you would speak them.

    The one-syllable rule

    When it comes to historical proper names or those found in the Bible, however, there is another rule many choose to follow.

    Rule 3: According to some, those words with two or more syllables typically just get an apostrophe after the final S, while one-syllable words getting both an apostrophe and an S.

    For example:

    • Jesus’ teachings

    • Zeus’s temper

    Some people apply it to more recent names as well, such as Dr. Seuss’s writings or Kenny Rogers’ songs, while others believe they all should also get an additional S.

    Singular nouns in plural form

    Rule 4: When it comes to singular nouns that are plural words, they typically just get the apostrophe.

    For example, the Beatles is a singular noun, but it’s in the form of a plural word. So, it would be:

    • The Beatles’ album

    For the sake of …

    Rule 5: Whether a noun ends in an S or not, if it’s followed by the word sake, most say it just gets an apostrophe.

    For example:

    • for goodness’ sake

    • for conscience’ sake

    • for appearance’ sake

    Others, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, say if the word before sake ends in an S, then it should just get an apostrophe. Others should get an apostrophe and an S. So, it would be:

    • for goodness’ sake

    • for conscience’s sake

    • for appearance’s sake

    Like, there’s a whole rabbit hole to go down there.

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      71·
      1 month ago

      While you’re right that there is a rabbit hole to go down, we just didn’t have a solution for this so far.
      “Matthias’ car” translates as “Matthias Auto”, which could also be a new Disney character.

      The problem is much less frequent in German, though, because our plurals don’t generally end with a ‘s’.

      • federal reverse@feddit.orgMEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        What? That’s completely untrue! Any time, the word ends on an s sound, the apostrophe moves to [the end of the word].

        Matthias’s car (or alternatively, Matthias’ car) is Matthias’ Auto.

        Assuming the final e is not pronounced, Alice’s car becomes Alice’ Auto. Alternatively, it can be Alices Auto if the final e is pronounced.

        • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          Interestingly, the Duden also spits out Matthias' as possible genitive: https://www.duden.de/deklination/substantive/Matthias_Vorname
          But I was then unsure, if they had already integrated the Deppenapostroph-rule.

          I wouldn’t know having seen an apostrophe in genitive in a formal text before, but no idea. Maybe there’s regional differences. Would explain why Duden lists both.

          Original German comment:

          Interessanterweise hat der Duden auch Matthias' als möglichen Genitiv ausgespuckt: https://www.duden.de/deklination/substantive/Matthias_Vorname
          Aber ich war mir dann unsicher, ob die schon direkt die Deppenapostroph-Regel aufgenommen hatten.

          Ich wüsste nicht, dass ich schonmal einen Apostroph beim Genitiv in einem formalen Text gesehen hätte, aber ja, kein Plan. Vielleicht gibt’s da auch regionale Unterschiede. Würde erklären, warum der Duden beides listet…

          • federal reverse@feddit.orgMEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            (Ftr: This is an English-language community.)

            But Duden listing Matthias as a possible genitive is wild. It seems they just list it in a weird way, because Jeremia is certainly not a reasonable genitive of Jeremia:

            duden.de: Jeremia | genitive: Jeremia, Jeremias

  • muelltonne@feddit.orgEnglish
    337·
    1 month ago

    Language is democratic. If people are starting to speak or write in a certain way, that is the correct way to use a language. I know that we have all these organizations trying to define “correct” language use, but if many Germans are deciding that they want to use this apostrophe, that should be correct.

    And there is another issue: There are a lot of people looking down on people who can’t read or write correctly. You can see this here: people are calling other people itiots just because they are using an apostrophe in a not officially accepted way. Which should never, never happen

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      182·
      1 month ago

      First off, a) Standard German is not a language that’s spoken anywhere in the country in the first place, not even at the Tagesschau studios. It’s a solely literary language, defined somewhat semi-democratically by book and newspaper editors and b) this is about orthography, not language qua language.

      This is not about telling people whether they should say “ich bin am gehen” or “ich bin gehend” – both are incorrect in Standard Geman, the reason it doesn’t have a present progressive is that people couldn’t agree which form to use, and the different forms are quite far apart. So it’s avoided by editors, hence it’s not part of the language, “ich gehe gerade” is used instead which is (IMNSHO) unnatural but also not terribly awkward. That kind of thing is way more at odds with how people actually speak than orthography, and accepted without second thought: Because Standard German is a Dachsprache. If I want to talk to a Bavarian, compromises will have to be made.

      Then, an orthography has to be, and this might be surprising to Anglophones, one thing: Logical and predictable, inferrable from how you speak and what things mean. The idiot’s apostrophe is not. It makes no sense, it follows no rule. If I say “gehn” then I can infer, from a uniform rule, that I should write “gehen” – because folks in the south say “gehe”, and well a compromise is when noone is happy. But using a different rule for “the dog’s bone” and “Jane’s bar”? There’s no justification for that. None. It introduces a distinction where there’s none.

      The issue I have with this whole thing isn’t that it seems to be influenced by English, the issue I have is that it makes as much sense as English orthography.

      • LesserAbe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        1 month ago

        As the commenter above you said, people use language differently than how formal rules describe. Is it a kind of capitulation for a formal rules body to change in response? Yes, probably. But so what? If someone doesn’t like it take it up with the general population.

        • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
          8·
          1 month ago

          As you might have gleaned from my comment, everyone uses language differently. Very differently. Scots vs. English kind of differently and that’s not even covering all autochthone minorities. To make sure the whole country has a way to understand each other we need to agree on a standard that’s half-way acceptable and half-way convenient to everyone. In setting that standard, why should we follow the practices of simple but bold businessmen (“Lara’s hair stylez”) over newspapers. One knows stuff about hair and not so much language, the other knows quite a bit about language and less about hair. Why are we asking plumbers how to bake bread and bakers how to fix faucets. Explain it to me.

          • LesserAbe@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            1 month ago

            Some questions: Is it your position that people can’t understand each other when using this apostrophe? Are you saying that only business people use this apostrophe? And are you saying that the only people who can be trusted to correctly use language are those at newspapers?

            • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
              91·
              1 month ago

              No, no, and no.

              The question is whether what’s understood as the standard is set by bowing to random influence from people being careless or plain uninformed, or by reference to how people specialising in the thing do it.

              This whole thing is just a declaration of bankruptcy on part of the standards body because the natural authorities of the language – and that’s editors, not barkeeps – will not be adopting this one. They also prevented some details about the 1996 spelling reform, while adopting the rest: In the end it was the reform that bent to the editors, not the editors bending to the standards body.

              You’re talking about “But shouldn’t randos be free to choose how they spell things” – yes, and they are. And the rest of the republic is free to consider that usage wrong, especially if those randos didn’t choose a spelling, but simply didn’t care. The standards body saying “hey shouldn’t this be right” has no authority over the opinion of the rest of the republic we’re not in France.

    • bstix@feddit.dkEnglish
      104·
      1 month ago

      What is your opinion on people using “would of” instead of “would have”?

      I don’t think that accepting the lowest common denominator or following the tyrrany of majority is particularly democratic, when it’s clearly destroying the meaning of the language.

      Sure, so let’s say we accept it, but then how do we teach children these new rules? It’ll only result in further degradation of the language because nobody knows what is right or wrong anymore.

      • DempstersBox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        Well for starters, kids aren’t going to whinge about it- they’re just going to use it, generally correctly for their setting.

        Headlines when a royal family kid is bilingual, every day regular-ass survival when a poor border town kid does it, unprompted.

        I mean, the royal kids totally would of got it on their own, right?

          • DempstersBox@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            27 days ago

            There was one royal kid-a girl- who learned spanish.

            It made headlines.

            I assume her accent is so bad as to be largely unintelligible to most spanish speaking folks.

            They have translators.

            Border kids learn both on their own or they starve

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        21·
        1 month ago

        Seems pretty straightforward… Teach it like we always have, and then just add a quick, “the traditional contraction expands into, ‘should have,’ but recently, ‘should of’ has become popular colloquially despite the apparent error.”

        Or something like that, I don’t know. It’s not like English doesn’t already have a billion exceptions to every single rule. What’s one more slang term?

        Do I like it? Fuck no. It sounds/looks bad, and I will probably silently judge you if you say or write it lol

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      85·
      1 month ago

      Language is democratic. If people are starting to speak or write in a certain way, that is the correct way to use a language

      What’s popular is what’s correct. We get it.

      That’s why the language is evolving based on influencers, people too stupid to KNOW the syntax guiding the path forward.

      Nice going.

    • Default_Defect@midwest.socialEnglish
      53·
      1 month ago

      So what is the proper thing to do when someone’s comment is completely unintelligible to me? The lack of punctuation and using the wrong version of there/their/they’re, to/too, etc. often makes for sentences I can’t even begin to make sense of. They see no problem with it, and other people seem to have no issue parsing it, so asking for clarification usually just gets the same response as being a mean about it, in my experience.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        11·
        1 month ago

        There are ways to ask for clarification without coming across as patronizing or condescending…

        You don’t even necessarily need to be overly polite about it. Why not just, “What does that even mean? Can you clarify?” or maybe just, “Your comment is unclear.”

        If they refuse to clarify… then yeah condescend away.

        I know I can be guilty of mocking people making stupid arguments using horrendous grammar, but that’s more about the content of their arguments… If they weren’t literal fascists, I would have no problem being more courteous when pointing out nonsensical comments.

    • RivalarrivalEnglish
      22·
      1 month ago

      I don’t think language is entirely beholden to democracy. Contrary to the beliefs of pedants English teachers, I think we are each empowered to utilize it how we wish, without concern for any broader consensus.

      For example, I have unilaterally deprecated “its”.

      Following normal grammatical rules, “+s” indicates plurality, not possession. “Its” violates this rule.

      The “+'s” construction is used to indicate both contraction (with “is” or “was”) and possession. “It’s” follows either set of rules, depending on context. There is no significant risk of ambiguity between the two meanings. “It’s” is a perfectly cromulent homonym for both meanings.

      As there is no need for a plural form of an inherently singular word, “its” is no longer a word.

  • Knuschberkeks@leminal.spaceEnglish
    12·
    1 month ago

    I cringe every time I see it, but just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it should be wrong. It is super wide spread to use it that way (even more wide spread than the “correct” way), so it should be considered legal imho. Sidenote: I also hate that the plural of “house” isn’t “hice” in eglish, but what can I do.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
      9·
      1 month ago

      Rice isn’t the plural of rouse, either. Dice is valid as singular and plural, no relation to douse. English is a language of exceptions rather than rules.

    • vxx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      1 month ago

      They’re also the reason we can communicate with almost everyone on the world. (that’s younger than 50 and not French)

      Imagine the Internet without a common language.

  • slurpeesoforion@startrek.websiteEnglish
    123·
    1 month ago

    Considering that American’s use apostrophe’s against even the proper American English form…

    They can probably just use the idiot part.

  • Vincent@feddit.nlEnglish
    9·
    1 month ago

    This battle has been lost a long time ago in Dutch. Although to be fair, for “Kati’s kiosk” it would have been fine anyway, since otherwise the pronunciation changes.

    Language keeps evolving, and English is coming for us all.

    • windowsphoneguy@feddit.orgEnglish
      5·
      1 month ago

      My main gripe with it is people that don’t use a ', but literally any other uptick/accent they can find, as you can see with Rosi`s Bar in the article. Also commonplace is places that sell ‘Crepe’s’

      But tell me, how does the German pronunciation of Katis and Kati’s differ? It’s still spoken the same way.

    • hyves@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      The English disease of putting spaces in a compound word might be worse… it’s not even consistent. It’ll be a new example of “Dutch grammar is 50% special cases.”

      • ValiantDust@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        We have that in German as well. But I think that one is accelerated by the fact that keyboards suck at predicting compound words and often it’s just easier to type them as two separate words. I have been guilty of that, even though I would never write them with a space by hand or typing on a physical keyboard.

  • d00ery@lemmy.worldEnglish
    103·
    1 month ago

    I normally complain about American English and the atrocious things they do to the language, so I’m on the side of the high German here.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    63·
    1 month ago

    How’s it feel rest of the world? To have English seep into your language after so many centuries of only having your languages seep into English.

    But for real, I get both sides here, apostrophic possession is nice, it’s convenient, it’s useful, and it’s foreign. I’m sure many Germans are mad, but it seems like it’s Germans doing the thing pissing them off.

    • pedz@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      How’s it feel rest of the world? To have English seep into your language after so many centuries of only having your languages seep into English.

      French: French

      Although, aside from the great vowel shift, we gladly contributed at fucking up English orthography.

    • pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      In German we simply add an s for the genitive, and we add an apostrophe when a letter is missing.

      For example Jacob’s book would be “Jakobs Buch” ¹ but John’s book would be “Johannes’ Buch”, not “Johannes’s Buch” ² and also not “Johannes’’ Buch” ³.

      ¹ not “Jakob’s Buch”, which is called the “Deppenapostroph” - fool’s apostrophe

      ² fool’s apostrophe

      ³ fool’s apostrophe and a second apostrophe to mark the cancelled letter

      The genitive is nice, convenient and useful, yes. But there’s no reason to add an apostrophe when no letter is missing.

      (And as explained above, no, it is not foreign, this isn’t changing anything in spoken language either, it’s just a common spelling error due to commonly seeing it in English)

      To draw a comparison regarding how annoying it is for anyone who cares about written language: It’s quite similar to as if people in English suddenly started marking the plural with an apostrophe. Or if “would of” instead of “would have” would become correct.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        1 month ago

        Idk what to tell you, but when people start spelling things differently because they see it that way in a foreign language and think their language is the same that’s borrowing a grammatical rule from a foreign language. It starts by being wrong, then it becomes a common mistake, then an alternative rule, then eventually ya borrowed it. The mistake is the quantum component of natural evolution whether it’s DNA, language, or anything else self replicating.

        We actually also do the apostrophe for when a letter is missing as well as the genitive. Probably got the former off y’all and nicked the latter from some other language. We speak frankenstein’s language after all.

        Personally I have no say in this. When using German as a native English speaker my aim is to mimic and err on the side of more “correct”. If Germans keep making this mistake though some are bound to eventually make it a stylistic choice or do it because it’s natural to them.

        • pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          1 month ago

          So if many people (still a minority by a large margin of course) started writing things like “I would of visited the museum’s today but I saw two rare bird’s, their just so fascinating.” it should become correct?

          It’s not like a majority is using apostrophes for the genitive in German. But since it’s so easy to spot the few % of miswritten genitives just stand out.

          • LwL@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            1 month ago

            If it’s commonly understood, yes. That is how language works. Words change over time. Reading “would of” is jarring as fuck but it’s also not really mistakable for anything other than would’ve.

  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    25 days ago

    hey germany, considering your history maybe you shouldn’t be making a fuss about linguistic purity?
    just a thought.