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Comment by theandrewbailey | Hacker News Reader

> The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer’s apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an ‘s’ is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun (“a kilo of potato’s”).

Grocer's apostrophes annoy me, along with words like "advices" (advice is an abstract noun and can't be plural, like "happiness") and "learnings" (use "lessons" instead).

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"Learnings" is more than annoying corpspeak though. It's a word so old that you can find usage from time it was spelled "lernynges" ("lernynges whiche Cathon gaf to his sone")

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/118379/first-use...

Corporate English is a blight. So many ugly substitutions, overloading existing words, for perfectly good and common words we already have.

It is my belief that you may not fully leverage the synergistic potential of the value-added verbosity inherent in corporate linguistics.

Agreed. It's very important to maximize cross-functional coherence to capitalize on strategic imperatives for maximal growth opportunities.

Unless there’s a fulcrum involved, I don’t want to read the word “leverage”.

The fulcrum is externalities. Good ask, though!

Let's double-click on that: There's value in expensive signalling, and sometimes the expense is an intentional (or at least tolerated) lack of aesthetics.

We should take this offline so we can really zoom in.

Corporate life is just really boring and this kind of nonsense is understood as fun by people engaging in it.

"informations" is a good one for non-native English language speakers to look out for.

As is “codes” - I hear this often from non-native colleagues

This one is honestly confusing.

* Error codes — correct.

* Their personal codes — correct.

* Multiple codes of conduct — correct.

And then computer code is used roughly like the noun 'writing' except you can say writings where appropriate.

The difference lies in how we conceptualize the noun:

- Computer code is seen as a continuous substance or body of work, like "writing" or "music."

- Other types of codes are seen as discrete units or systems.

It's similar to how we say "information" (uncountable) but "facts" (countable), even though they're related concepts.

Yes, code is a substance, like sand or iron. The system is built out of code (not codes), just like the table is built out of wood (not woods).

Hearing someone talk about ‘codes’ has the same weird vibe as when they talk about ‘Legos’.

Source codes of dependencies. Might be acceptable...

Also why not pluralise all words? Sources codes.

With regard to source code(s), I hear it exclusively from scientists, regardless of nationality.

None of the coders I've worked with (and I'm in Berlin) have put the s on the end of code.

Quite a few will use "he" to describe inanimate objects, though: "I spilled coffee on the table and now he is wet", that kind of thing.

(This is still better than my German, which is embarassing given how long I've been here)

I think it makes sense, like a scientist might think of their codes as discrete things, because one code was written for each experiment. The work-product is the experiment, the codes are just little things that make it happen.

In scientific computing, they tend to say "code" where the rest of us would say "program".

Programs? I rarely hear it these days. It's all "apps". ;)

Hearing "codes" generally means you've found yourself around Fortran. Simple as.

Nonsense. Informations has long been used in English. I have before me a letter by Albert Einstein to Norbert Wiener regarding a young Kurt Eisemann, in which Einstein writes, "From his letter enclosed here, you will get informations about his life and studies before he arrived here." And in the Princeton translation of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens one finds, "The Eleven also bring up informations laid against magistrates alleged to be disqualified". Informations is perhaps a bit obscure but it's perfectly valid.

Well, for what I red, Einstein primary language stayed German all life through (Information/Informationen). And he learned English rather late in life, starting at 34 apparently.[1] And while not speaking German, he was more likely to practice some Italian as a spontaneous expression desire (informazione/informazioni) and did practice French well enough to give a lecture in this latter language (information/informations).

[1] https://www.lingalot.com/what-languages-did-albert-einstein-...

But did you know that there huge load of "datas" out there?

That one's a bit mean given that data does have a distinct plural, it just happens to be spelled the same because whoever came up with english didn't really grok the phonetic alphabet.

>That one's a bit mean given that data does have a distinct plural, it just happens to be spelled the same because whoever came up with english didn't really grok the phonetic alphabet.

Isn't 'data' already plural, with 'datum' being the singular of the plural 'data'?

Datum is the singular, which is one point of data. When you group together a datum with another datum, they become data.

And the origin of that plural form comes from Latin.

Data can be used as a plural or as a mass noun. When it is a mass noun it is treated as singular. Hence we say "data is hard to come by" versus "data are hard to come by."

Also datums is the plural of datum when it is used in an engineering sense, which is the most likely place one would still encounter it.

Those plural forms are sometimes referred to as European continental dialect of English and do not raise questions here. If we, Europeans have to use English as lingua franca, we can and we will adapt it to our needs same way as Americans, Afro-Americans or Indians did. So my advice: just get used to it.

Edit: cultural possession of language is nonsense, it belongs to all speakers, native and non-native alike. Germans must get used to foreign influence on their language too and Ukrainians should stop fighting Russian language and start writing their own rules for it (what can piss Moscow more?)

I had never heard of that, but Wikipedia has similar examples in "Euro English" [0], though there it is because similar words exist with s in other languages. I wonder if something like "advices" exists in another language?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English#Inflection

I think you can say it does? Ie in other languages, the plural of advice (which in English is advice, "I gave him a lot of advice") is spelled differently(with the plural ending). From my personal knowledge, in Russian advice is совет and "advices" (or advice pl.) is советы. In Spanish, advice is consejo and there is a plural consejos. This can probably be also translated (in both cases) as "tip" and"tips" or something similar.

Yeah, but at least the examples wikipedia has, are for similar words, not just applying random other grammatical rules:

informations (French) -> informations (English)

compétences -> competences

The Dutch may have some "rights" to adapt English. They're #1 in non-native English proficiency for 5 years in a row and surpassed Canada (considered native speakers) on overall English proficiency some years ago.

One point of debate is that English in the Netherlands has become mostly American English over the last decades due to media influence. While originally "school English" in the Netherlands was British English.

I actually go full-descriptivist on this and it erases all the posturing. If you're a speaker of English, native or otherwise, and you say or write something purposefully and don't consider it a mistake then it's correct.

Wether other people will join you in your new usage is yet undetermined but also doesn't really matter. AAVE is the perfect example of this happening large scale in the real world.

"Wether"—I see what you did there...

There are multiple ways to define “correct”. I tend to favor: having the desired effect. This results in a “correct” that is highly flexible, but doesn’t label anything that one happens to choose as “correct”.

> Canada (considered native speakers)

A quarter of the population of Canada is in Quebec where the only official language is French and most people would not be considered native English speakers.

It's bizarre. I hate seeing it as well but if I don't pay attention I find myself typing them for no discernable reason.

“Learnings” has a potentially useful nuance, referring specifically to whatever it is one took away from a lesson. I know the word “lesson” itself can also cover that meaning, but “learning” is more specific and given how widely it’s used, that specificity appears to be useful in some circumstances.

Similar—and even more on-topic—I see a lot of non-first-language writers using "codes" in a similar way, to describe source code snippets.

I would normally expect "the grocer's apostrophe" to refer to a single grocer and "the grocers' apostrophe" to refer to a plural group of grocers, which I assume is what you intended.

The term "(green)grocer's apostrophe" refers to the misuse of the apostrophe in plurals, which seemingly occurs disproportionately on signs in those shops. It's ironic that it contains a tricky-to-place apostrophe. Should the meaning be "the apostrophe of the greengrocer" or should it be "the apostrophe that greengrocers misuse"? Either works fine. For the same reason, I always have to check whether it's "mother's day" or "mothers' day" because... it's both!

I’ve never heard “advices” (in the US). Maybe it is a continental Europe thing? They may have surpassed even us, at the art of inventing new words and spellings to annoy the English.

I've heard my wife say it that way because it is a plural in her native language.

Learning can be the gerund form of the verb “to learn” and isn’t necessarily a noun referring to the abstract concept.

There is no more misguided use of an apostrophe than to use it to "create a pronoun's possessive" as using "it's" in place of "its"

Do you also write "he's" and "she's" (as possessive pronouns)? No? Then it's "its".

Er, yes because they're short for he is and she is. You mean "his" and "hers".

But you don't write them like that, you write "his/hers"

Different words. "His dog" means the dog belonging to him. "He's a dog" means "he is a dog".

> Different words

Obviously

I meant people don't write "he's" as the possessive form of he. Hence they shouldn't write it's as the possessive form of it.

he's/she's going to have to deal with it

Or even "it's going to have to deal with it" — though hopefully the pronoun refers to a pet or farm animal of some kind, as referring to a human as "it" is dehumanizing.

"He's got a head shaped like a massive orange"

"Who?"

"Xtk'act'sbu"

"Oh no, not the Klingon cosplayer!"

So is this the proper form?

-> it's putting the lotion on its skin

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