Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe' gets approval

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by graypegg on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @12:33PM (#41789798)

There are specific subsets of English that are used in certain domains that have standards bodies behind them, like Simplified Technical English for aviation. It even has a working group! [0]

VOA also have a Learning English spec for broadcast english [1] but that seems to be a lot looser of a spec.

So it's definitely not impossible. The funny thing, is I remember being told in grade school that in English Canada, I was to write numbers with a space as the thousands separator. `$10 000.00`, instead of `$10,000.00`. This is because french Canada uses a comma as a decimal point, `10 000.00 $`, so a space is non ambiguous. I have rarely ever seen the English space format in use here. I don't think English speakers would respect any authority if it wasn't as domain-scoped as Aviation or Learning english.

[0] https://www.asd-ste100.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_English_(version_of_E...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by int_19h on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @03:13PM (#41791575)

FWIW while comma vs period for decimal fractions is a point of significant variability globally, the use of comma to group digits is fairly uncommon, whereas period is universally understood as a decimal separator even in countries where comma is normally used for that purpose (thanks to calculators and computers). And, on the other hand, space-separated groups are self-explanatory for those used to comma for that purpose. So using spaces for grouping + period for fractions is indeed the way to go to maximum readability worldwide.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by speakeron on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @12:56PM (#41790062)

The use of a space as a thousands separator has been around since the 1940s as recommended by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and it was what we used when I was a kid at school in the UK. They specified it should be a thin (half) space.

https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/28433818/working-docume...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by graypegg on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @01:16PM (#41790272)

No I know, it's also part of the French standard. Just more so commenting on how uncommon it is from Canadian English speakers despite it being the Canadian English "standard" recommend by a Canadian entity similar to the French or German standards bodies.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by michaelt on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @01:29PM (#41790450)

> So it's definitely not impossible.

Well, it's definitely not impossible to publish a document declaring itself the standard form of english.

But I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to get english speakers to comply - or even to get any countries to make the standard legally binding.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by catlikesshrimp on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @01:46PM (#41790653)

Imagine either England or the USA accepting to vary their language towards a common standard. I expect strong opposition would stem from pride.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by ktosobcy on Thursday October 10, 2024 @12:34PM (#41800582)

Judging from how well adopting SI went (is going in the UK?) sadly it seems impossible :(

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Germans decry influence of English as 'idiot's apostrophe... by qingcharles on Friday October 18, 2024 @12:25AM (#41876326)

It's interesting now to see more and more programming languages using an underscore as the thousands separator to allow for easier reading without trying to get into a mess of commas or full-stops as separators.

[ Parent | on HN ]