Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2017-11-17 um 00:50 schrieb Simon Albrecht <address@hidden>:

> On 16.11.2017 17:37, Werner Arnhold wrote:
>> For example: the English
>> language knows the saxon genitiv form e.g. "Garner's" (see below). In
>> German it always was absolutely wrong to use a quote for that reason.
>> When after the german reunion a big part of the people raised with
>> Russion as first foreign language, they often used that form, e.g.
>> "Lisa's Wolllädchen". Some time ago that way of writing was declared
>> legal.
> 
> Interesting. That’s an explanation I’ve never heard before, but I do know 
> that using an apostrophe with the genitive of names was perfectly normal in 
> German in the 19th century (and I would be in favor of reintroducing it… :-) )

An apostrophe in German is a sign for something left out like "so’n Ding" 
(short for "so ein Ding"), similar to English use in "don’t" (do not).

While it would make some sense to use it in "mein’s" ("meines"), while still 
being unnecessary, it makes no sense at all to use it in a genitive like 
"Lisa’s" except in cases like "Jens’s" (oldfashioned but complete would be 
"Jensens").

Some people also think they need to use an apostrophe in dialect words like 
"Mader’l" (Bavarian/Austrian diminutive of "Maid/Mädchen"), and that’s also 
completely wrong, since "-e(r)l" ("-le" in Suebian, "-li" in Swiss German) is 
just a dialect variant of standard German diminutive suffix "-lein".

The wrong use of an apostrophe in German is called "Deppen-Apostroph" 
(Deppostroph?), it shows only that you don’t master your mother language.
See e.g. http://www.deppenapostroph.info


Greetlings, Hraban
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fiëé visuëlle
Henning Hraban Ramm
http://www.fiee.net