{"id":66439,"date":"2024-10-10T06:49:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T11:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=66439"},"modified":"2024-10-11T05:47:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T10:47:47","slug":"english-is-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=66439","title":{"rendered":"English is innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday's guest post by Andreas Stolcke, \"English influence on German spelling<\/a>\", covered Duden's grudging admission<\/a> that 's<\/em> is allowed in certain restricted contexts, and noted the widespread negative reaction attributing this \"Deppenapostrophe\" (= \"idiot's apostrophe\") to the malign influence of English.<\/span><\/p>\n

But\u00a0Heike Wiese<\/a>, via Joan Maling<\/a>, sent a link to Anatol Stefanowitsch<\/a>, \"Apostrophenschutz<\/a>\", Sprachlog<\/em> 4\/26\/2007, which offers a very different take.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wann kamen die \u201eDeppenapostrophe\u201c hinzu? Glaubt man den Apostrophenj\u00e4gern, so muss dies in j\u00fcngerer Zeit geschehen sein, da ein intensiver Einfluss des Englischen sich erst seit dem Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs beobachten l\u00e4sst, und die vemeintlichen Hauptschuldigen, die Elektronikm\u00e4rkte, gibt es sogar erst seit dem Ende der siebziger Jahre. Eine sch\u00f6ne Erkl\u00e4rung, mit der man die Apostrophitis als eins von vielen Symptomen des \u201edenglischen Patienten<\/a>\u201c abhaken k\u00f6nnte.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leider ist diese Erkl\u00e4rung falsch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Der Genitiv-Apostroph findet sich bereits seit Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts, erst bei Eigennamen und bald auch bei Ortsnamen und anderen W\u00f6rtern. Der Plural-Apostroph findet sich seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. Zun\u00e4chst st\u00f6rte sich auch weiter niemand an diesen Verwendungen.<\/span><\/p>\n

When did the \"idiot apostrophes\" come into being? If you believe the apostrophe hunters, this must have happened more recently, since the intensive influence of English has only been evident since the end of the Second World War, and the supposed main culprits, the electronics markets, have only existed since the end of the 1970s. A nice explanation that could be used to write off apostrophitis as one of the many symptoms of the \"Denglish patient<\/a>.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this explanation is wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

The genitive apostrophe has been around since the middle of the 17th century, first in proper names and then in place names and other words. The plural apostrophe has been around since the end of the 18th century. At first, no one was bothered by this use.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stefanowitsch's examples unfortunately don't go back to the 17th century, but they do include these, from someone who was neither an idiot nor a sufferer from Denglish disease<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In Friedrich Nietzsches Briefen und Notizen beispielsweise finden sich hunderte von Genitiv-Apostrophen:<\/span><\/p>\n

Vielleicht sieht sich unser Gebahren doch einmal wie Fortschritt an; wenn\u00a0aber nicht, so mag\u00a0Friedrich\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0des Grossen Wort auch zu uns gesagt sein und zwar zum Troste \u2026 (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I\/Nachgelassene Fragmente).<\/span><\/p>\n

Ich gehe, seit einigen Monaten schon, jeden Abend von 1\/2 10\u201311 in raschem Schritt durch Theile\u00a0Venedig\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0(Brief von Heinrich K\u00f6selitz an Nietzsche, 1882)<\/span><\/p>\n

Aufs Kind die H\u00e4nde pr\u00fcfend legen Und schauen ob es\u00a0Vater\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0Art \u2014 Wer weiss? (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I\/Nachgelassene Fragmente)<\/span><\/p>\n

In Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s letters and notes, for example, there are hundreds of genitive apostrophes:<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps our behavior will one day be seen as progress; but if not, then Frederick<\/strong>\u00a0the Great\u2019s words may also be spoken to us, and indeed for consolation \u2026 (Human, All Too Human I\/Posthumous Fragments).<\/span><\/p>\n

For several months now, every evening from 10:30 to 11:00 I have been walking briskly through parts\u00a0of Venice<\/strong>\u00a0(Letter from Heinrich K\u00f6selitz to Nietzsche, 1882)<\/span><\/p>\n

Lay your hands on the child and examine it and see if it is like\u00a0the father<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 who knows? (Human, All Too Human I\/Posthumous Fragments)<\/span><\/p>\n

Stefanowitsch's account suggests that German apostrophe-phobia, like most cases of prescriptivist peeving, originated as the decision of a self-appointed authority, in this case Konrad Duden<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Erst ab Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts trafen diese Verwendungen auf Widerstand. Vor allem die Entscheidung Konrad Dudens, sie explitzit als regelwidrig zu behandeln, trugen zu ihrem Niedergang bei. Nicht jeder lie\u00df sich allerdings von diesen Verboten beeindrucken. So soll Thomas Mann den Apostroph nach Lust und Laune weiterverwendet haben.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not until the middle of the 19th century that these uses met with resistance. Above all, Konrad Duden's decision to explicitly treat them as illegal contributed to their decline. However, not everyone was impressed by these bans. Thomas Mann is said to have continued to use the apostrophe as he pleased.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a more recent and extensive survey of the topic, we should turn to a source that I've barely had time to skim: Luise Kempf, \"Die Evolution des Apostrophgebrauchs: Eine korpuslinguistische Untersuchung<\/a>.\"\u00a0Jahrbuch f\u00fcr germanistische Sprachgeschichte<\/i> (2019). My impression so far is that foreign names do play a pre-Duden role, as indicated in these tables:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But the recent influence of English is definitely not the whole story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday's guest post by Andreas Stolcke, \"English influence on German spelling\", covered Duden's grudging admission that 's is allowed in certain restricted contexts, and noted the widespread negative reaction attributing this \"Deppenapostrophe\" (= \"idiot's apostrophe\") to the malign influence of English. But\u00a0Heike Wiese, via Joan Maling, sent a link to Anatol Stefanowitsch, \"Apostrophenschutz\", Sprachlog 4\/26\/2007, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthography","category-peeving"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66439"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66462,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66439\/revisions\/66462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}