Apostrophes

Yesterday, Red Baron read in a blog about the "grocer's apostrophe" in English. I became interested in comparing this particular inverted comma with the Deppenapostroph (goof's apostrophe) in German.

First and foremost, the apostrophe stands for a dropped character, i.e., an elision. When it's (sic!) missing, it's even more annoying than when there is one too many.

In the "Cashier Talking Points" below, you will find two "grocer's missing apostrophes" where, according to the blog's author, the second one is a twofold blunder: "Pretzel Crisps" is plural: "Promote that they are on sale."

©Jerry Coyne

As far as the grocer's apostrophe (or grocers' apostrophe) proper is concerned, Jerry Coyne tells the following story: When I worked for the Cambridge Food Co-op in grad school, for instance, I had to put up with this sign on the spuds: "Potatoe's."  Red Baron admits that "potato" is a difficult word, even for former US vice presidents trying to spell its plural correctly.

What about the apostrophe of the English Possessive Case (Sächsischer Genitiv/Saxon genitive)? Also, here the apostrophe indicates elision. In Old English, the genitive of dæg (day) was dæges, which was slurred to day's: It's a hard day's night.

In modern English, the possessive is mainly used with persons: Walter's car, Jesus' words. This is what Red Baron was taught. Constructions such as "Freiburg's University" were not promoted in my English school grammar of 1946, although now they are perfectly at ease in my modern English grammar of 1964.


Since 1901, the German language has had no Possessive Case. However, look at all four Wurststands on Freiburg's Münsterplatz more than one century later:

No teacher taught them the Deppenapostroph.

The trend toward the Deppenapostroph in German is frequently regarded as bad Denglisch. However, that's not all. Increasingly, you will also find the misplaced inverted comma in those exceptional "German" words that form their plurals with an "s": Pizza's instead of Pizzas or Büro's instead of Büros.

The Nec plus ultra (©Wikipedia)

You even read bolder constructions that disfigure the correct plural of Nudel (noodle), Nudeln, into Nudel'n. These "modern" plurals are used to catch the eye of their shocked readers.
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