Germans are up in arms

At English, of course

The Germans are up in arms about English. Not about the English, but about English, the language. That’s right, the language every German endeavours to master before they’re ten years of age, they’re up in arms about. The apostrophe rules in the English language, so it seems (yes, those; apparently they still exist and are powerful enough to make inroads into other languages, would you believe it?) have influenced the apostrophe rules in German to the extent that the German language has now adopted one of the apostrophe rules of English (or, more accurately, has adopted a version of one of the apostrophe rules of English) and Germans, by all accounts, are up in arms about it. Figuratively, I’m glad to say.

It all has to do with pubs, taverns, hotels, inns, snack bars and other places of hospitality (like brothels, strip clubs … porn cinemas for all I know) that, instead of being named after a cute phrase (like The Cutting Crew for a hairdresser’s), are known by the proprietor’s name, like, say, Rudi: Rudi’s Hairdressing Salon, or, in German, Rudis Frisörladen.

Laden is a common word for a shop, although it’s not quite kosher, one might say. The correct word for a German shop is a Geschäft, which literally means business, in all senses of the word, from the world of commerce, to a particular enterprise, to what a dog does in the gutter of the roadway. The word Laden actually means a shutter, and these shutters were originally to be found on lean-tos used as shops around the outside base of churches and cathedrals: splendid examples of these are extant in Heidelberg around its Church of the Holy Spirit.

Here you can clearly see the shuttered stores built into the base of the church’s outside walls. From there, the word came to mean a box that could be slung around the neck of a vendor and opened up to form what is known in German as a Bauchladen or tummy shop, since it rests against the vendor’s tummy: the sort of thing that we used to see in cinemas, selling ice cream and confectionery during the interval.

However, although Laden may look as if it is related to the verb laden, meaning to load (putatively leading to the conclusion that Laden means a store), the two are utterly unrelated. To quote the Duden Herkunftswörterbuch:

Das auf das deutsche Sprachgebiet beschränkte Substantiv (mittelhochdeutsch laden »Brett, Bohle; Fensterladen; Kaufladen«) ist mit der Sippe von Latte verwandt. das Wort bedeutete zunächst “Brett, Bohle” and “aus Brettern oder Bohlen Gerfertigtes”. Dann bezeichnete es einserseits speziell das Brett zum Schutz des Festers (beachte die Zusammensetzung Fensterladen (17. Jh.)) und andererseits das in einer Verkaufsbude herabgelassene, zur Warenauflage dienende Brett, dann auch den aus Brettern hergerichteten Verkaufsstand. Aus der Verwendung des Wortes im letzteren Sinne hat sich die heute allgemein übliche Bedeutung “Geschäft” entwickelt.

For the uninitiated, I shall translate [and interject]:

The noun restricted to the language area of Germany (Middle High German laden »board, plank; window shutter; shop«), is related to the family of batten [Latte also, you may be interested to know, translates as stiffie or hard-on, which puts a whole new slant on the royal name Mountbatten and can make ordering an Italian-style milky coffee a matter requiring some linguistic care]. The word initially meant “board, plank” and “an item made from boards or planks”. At that time, it specifically referred to the board used to protect a window (note the compound word window shutter (17th century)) and, on the other hand, the board lowered in a sales booth in order to display goods, and then also to a sales stand constructed of boards. The use of the word in the latter sense has given rise to the now generally accepted meaning of “shop”.

My former mother-in-law, who was a manager at Edeka, a chain of German supermarkets, abhorred the use of the word Laden, or its constructed plural Läden, insisting instead that Edeka, at least, was a Geschäft, not a Laden.

Anyhow, about this the Germans (apart from Gabi) are not up in arms, but rather about the use of the apostrophe in a word like Rudi’s, because it indicates possession in English but is not required in German to indicate possession, or what they call the Genitiv. For things in German, the only way to express genitive is the long way, using of the: das Dach des Hauses = the roof of the house (one can also use the preposition of: von dem Haus). They cannot say the house’s roof. Haus means house, and the addition of es (in this case, because Haus ends in s already, otherwise it’d just be an s that is added) indicates the genitive case, of possession. However, no s gets added when a proper noun is used in this construction so that, to take our example, the hairdressing salon of Rudi becomes der Frisörladen des Rudi. However, with proper nouns (unlike with simple nouns), Rudi can become prepositive, and then the s is indeed added: Rudis Frisörladen. At no point when constructing a German genitive does one use an apostrophe, however.

But, in English we do: the Salon of Rudi becomes Rudi’s Salon, and the importation of this rule into German for things like shops and bars and the like—but N.B. NOT for the general language (such as a description of Rudi’s shoes and socks)—now has many German purists complaining about the influence of English.

It is a little complex to now have a rule whereby Rudi’s Salon is Rudi’s Frisörladen, but Rudi’s shoes and socks are still Rudis Schuhe und Strümpfe. It all seems like some panacea to signwriters who in the past have allowed themselves to be influenced by English and made a small gaffe in the German language, who can now retort to complaints of their grammatical inexactitude that they are right according to the language experts. All of which avoids any need whatsoever to rewrite Hans’s Bierkeller or Sexy Susie’s Stripteasebude (not, I might add, that there was ever much need to rewrite them before in any case).

Meanwhile abuse of the English apostrophe continues unabated, and of the English language generally, not this time by Germans but by English-speakers themselves (and, oh dear, not again—Dutch-speakers), and, for your amusement, here are two little gems that turned up in my shopping recently, of products from Ireland and the Netherlands. A box of caramel biscuits is fine, but to label each one of them as caramel biscuits somewhat fails to appreciate the distinction between the singular and the plural. As for B vitamin and D vitamin, I think even the Americans, who speak of the Potomac River, as opposed to the British habit of putting River before the name, as in River Clyde, would not in fact talk about B vitamin, but rather about vitamin B.

I shall refain at this juncture from resorting to any arms, figurative or otherwise: there is, alas, no arguing with the printed word (unless it be to add a comment below).