Germany’s losing battle against the ‘idiot’s apostrophe’

“Now it’s official,” the German press lamented, “the idiot’s apostrophe is correct.” The Council for German Orthography, the body that regulates German spelling and grammar, has relaxed the rules on when and how apostrophes can be used to show possession. What seems like a matter for grammar pedants has fueled angst for the very future of the German language.

The issue itself isn’t new. Unlike English, German doesn’t traditionally use apostrophes to show possession. So Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, becomes Onkel Toms Hütte in the German translation. But this rule has long been eroded. It’s common to find places like “Tina’s Wolllädchen” — “Tina’s Little Wool Shop” — which should be “Tinas Wolllädchen” according to the old rules.

Language is the one constant in Germany’s nationhood

Though the English-style apostrophe is already in widespread use, it’s met with derision by those who consider themselves guardians of the German language. Teachers, journalists and writers refer to it as the “Deppen-Apostroph” — the idiot’s apostrophe. Accordingly, the moral outrage over the rule change has been loud.

Europe’s largest tabloid Bild is “pained” by the English use of apostrophes. The regional newspaper Volksstimme feels the “Council for German Orthography has capitulated” in assenting to the “thousands of little marks between a name and the genitive ‘s’ that have defiled our country for years.” There is an entire website dedicated to the idiot’s apostrophe which pillories particularly egregious examples.

This may all seem much ado about nothing to an English native speaker. The English language largely follows descriptive patterns whereby dictionaries and rule books change according to the way people use language. In German, it is the other way around. New rules on grammar, spelling and vocabulary have the power to change the way people write and speak.

Take the 1996 German orthography reform. Its considerable changes to spelling and punctuation were agreed by the governments of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland and then implemented in schools and public administration by law. I was in school in Germany at the time and remember how much acrimony this caused the teaching body and the students themselves who would be punished by dissenting against the new rules. It felt odd to add an extra “p” to the word “stop” because it had a short vowel. But it had to be “Stopp” now however wrong that looked.

The rigidity of German orthography has deep historical roots as a defensive reaction against outside influences on the language. Jacob Grimm, best known for being one half of the Brothers Grimm who collated German fairy tales but also an influential linguist in his own right, was already complaining about English in the early nineteenth century. Only a language with words as unbending to grammar as English could come up with something as ugly as the genitive “s’ “he bemoaned.

Today, English has made much deeper inroads into German. Words like “baby,” “job” and “okay” have been part of the German vocabulary for so long that few people would actively recognize them as anglicisms. But in the 1990s, youth slang, marketing and the media began to absorb English words and grammar structures on an unprecedented scale. Teachers and parents tried in vain to stop their children from declaring things and people they approved of as “cool.” Cafés offered “coffee to go.” Many places to mix German and English, coming up with names like “Back Shop,” whereby “Back” isn’t actually English but German for “baking.”

The advance of personal computers and the internet brought words like “chat,” “download” and “e-mail” into widespread use. Social media and a globalized corporate culture have driven this to whole new levels. It’s now common to hear works like “meeting,” “call,” “coaching” and “deadline” being used in offices. Identity politics brought words like “gender” and “queer” into the German language. Young people refer to things as “safe,” “cringe” or “nice.”

This wave of English vocabulary and the accompanying influence on grammar fuels angst for the survival of the German language itself. Organizations like the Verein Deutsche Sprache — Association for the German Language — encourage people to use German words instead of “Denglisch” ones, i.e. mixing English and German. Its index lists anglicisms and suggests German alternatives. Instead of saying “Brexit,” for instance, you could go with “Brausgang,” short for “Britanniens Ausgang.”

Efforts to purify the German language have a long tradition. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, people fretted over French influences as words like “Parfüm” (perfume) and “Balkon” (balkony) entered the language. Previously, it had been the pervasiveness of Latin that had kept German-speakers awake at night. Purists had suggested replacing the word “Fenster” (from the Latin “fenestra” — “window”) with ‘Tageleuchter’ — “day lighter.” It didn’t catch on.

It’s easy to ridicule these futile efforts to protect the German language from outside influences. But language is the one constant in Germany’s nationhood. It was only founded as a state in the late nineteenth century and has since been a constitutional monarchy, a democratic republic, a Nazi dictatorship and a divided nation. Its current boundaries as a unified country are only thirty-four years old. Defining who or what is German has never been easy, leaving language as the key marker of identity. Any perceived linguistic erosion will always trigger much deeper fears.

The ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ is no more of a threat to German than the words ‘Fenster’ and ‘Parfüm’ have been. The language will continue to evolve, absorbing foreign influences as it goes. And that’s as much an eternal truth as the existential fears that accompany this process.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.