this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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In German people tend to increase "only" (das einzige). As in, they say something is the "onliest" (das einzigste). It's usually a good indicator of someone's education.
In many regions it is common to do comparisons with "as" (wie). As in "My dog is bigger as yours" instead of "My dog is bigger than yours". The most infuriating thing about this is that most people doing that mistake don't even acknowledge that it is one. At least people who say "onliest" can be convinced that it is wrong.
Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive. Like in "Anna's food is good". In German that should be written as "Annas Essen ist gut". But due to many people making the same mistake (I guess also because we're used to it from English sentences) it has been allowed to use an apostrophe. So in that case I'm just a grumpy old guy.
I opened the thread to see if someone already posted this. Glad I'm not the onliest german to be annoyed by this.
In Dutch it's also common to use als (as) instead of dan (than). Technically it's wrong though.
This gets really confusing if you're from Limburg. In Limburgish, "daan" (the cognate to Dutch "dan") only exists as the time indicator. With comparisons the correct Limburgish is to use "es" for differences (e.g. "Jan is groeter es Maria", "John is bigger than Mary"), and "wie" for equivalents (e.g "Jan is eve aajd wie Maria", "John is as old as Mary"). Now "es" is cognate to Dutch "als", but using it in Dutch as in Limburgish is wrong. So yeah this gets confusing.
I’m (re-)learning Yiddish at the moment, and “as (wie)” is a common construction; it’s interesting to see which words and sentence formats are common (between German and Yiddish), and which aren’t. I wonder if that’s where this usage comes from.
Nice, very interesting find.
Also, I've never been called a Grammar Nazi more elegantly.
I never meant to say or imply that you were and I apologise most humbly if it came through that way. I just thought that it was interesting.
There are many examples of incorrectly placed apostrophes in German here:
http://www.deppenapostroph.info/
Another mistake in the German language is the incorrect separation of compound words. An extreme example would be Brotaufstrich (spread/parfait) as Brot auf Strich (bread on line).
Additional examples in German are here:
http://www.deppenleerzeichen.info/
Another incorrect seperation of Brotaufstrich: Bro Taufstrich (bro baptismal line)
Oh god before i read your comment i thought i have nothing to add. Then i realised that i know people who say things like: als wie. Mein hund ist grösser als wie deiner.
In Dutch, the only (one) is "de enige". People often use "de enigste", which actually means the cutest. Enig -> enigste.
"Ik ben als enigste over" "Ja, schattig ben je zeker"
""Ich bin der Einzigste, der noch übrig ist" "Ja, du bist wirklich süß"
"I'm the only one left." "Yeah, cute you sure are"
Even technically I'd consider it an error - the genitive/"possessive" apostrophe in English highlights that you're dealing with a clitic, attached to the end of the noun phrase; e.g. the dog**'s** food` → the dog and the cat**'s** food. In German however it doesn't behave like a clitic, it's a plain declension; e.g. das Futter des Hundes → das Futter des Hundes und der Katze - you're switching words, not moving them.
I wonder if that's because most people nowadays use von+Dative instead.
Not a native speaker, so I could be wrong about this:
I've seen a construction using proper nouns (eg. Annas Haus) where an "s" indicates possession, but no apostrophe. This doesn't seem to apply to non-proper nouns (das Haus der Frau) and is different from normal genitive construction that adds an "s" to masc/neut noun genders (das Haus des Mannes)