The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Apostrophe Protection Society"

Dutch

pjotrg — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:42:35 +0000

Dutch people prefer "Cheap";-)

Try Kiwi

skeptic — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:05:21 +0000

Kiwi is much easier.

It is derivative of English, it is all monosyllabic, there are only two vowels, no cases, and spelling is freeform.

Try Finnish

aroos — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:03:50 +0000

Yes French spelling is difficult but think about Finnish grammar. Nouns have at least 17 cases. The main cases are: Nominatiivi, Genetiivi, Akkusatiivi, Partitiivi, Essiivi, Translatiivi, Abessiivi, Komitatiivi, Instruktiivi, Inessiivi, Elatiivi, Illatiivi, Adessiivi, Ablatiivi, Allatiivi. The you need to consider the subjects: me, you, he, us, we, you, they. They are all different.

You cannot imagine how annoying it is when Finnish speaking foreigners mix these all the time. For example elatiivi and ablatiivi are often mixed (from outside of the house – from inside of the house = talolta - talosta). From inside of my house is talostani, outside of Skep’s house is talostaan. (You may also guess that meeting a Finnish speaking foreigner is a fairly rare incident. :-)

A verb in Finnish has theoretically 12.000 different forms. Not all are in use but a spelling program needs to recognize all. I’ll save you from examples. The only positive side is that the grammar is pretty regular and Word spelling check works quite well.

Aale

rectification

cybi — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:47:37 +0000

of course, everyone read "sheep" and not "sheap" ;-)
cheers,
Cybi.

Not so simple

rpmason — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:52:52 +0000

I wish it were that simple. Various grammarians and style guides have advocated using the apostrophe to designate plurals of initialisms. They based their decision on the rule about appostrophes for plurals of the letter A, for example, "I have three A's on my report card" so the reader doesn't misunderstand it as the word As. Good grief! But the grammarians and style guides are slowly coming around. My favorite apostrophe-related photo is one that showed two bookstore signs. One read "DVD's" and the other read "CDs".

what about french

cybi — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:10:21 +0000

Hi Skep,

Agree, but you must try french one day. I'm english and have been living in belgium since kindergarten (30+ years).
And I can tell you that french is no easy language. In english, you have certain exceptions (e.g. one sheap, two sheap). In french, there are hundreds of exceptions and all kinds of accents (é, è, ê, ë, û, ü, ö, ç): example, Christmas = Nôel.
Verbe conjugation is a nightmare. Even explaning the principals is hectic, avoiding all the exceptions...

Furthermore, living in Belgium, you need to speak 3 languages to work in the big companies: french and dutch (national langages) and english(international). So, for example, on a daily basis , I write "address" with 2 "dd" and 2 "ss" in english, "adresse" with one "d" and 2 "ss" in french and "adres" with one "d" and one "s" in dutch. Did you follow ;-)

Keep up the blog,
A belgium fan.