You really don’t want to go down this road. I have no problem starting a movement to get Americans to call them “LEGO’s” and you won’t be able to even suggest it’s wrong because it’ll just be a contraction of “LEGO parts,” “LEGO bricks,” and “LEGO sets.” (But feel free to lambast us over punctuation and quotation marks.)
How long do you thing that they will turn the already-plural "data" into the hyper-plural "datas"? Or has this already happened, I am too afraid to check.
Data is a mass/uncountable noun now (like meat) rather than a countable noun (like coin/coins). Turning it countable involves a helper noun like data point / data points.
"Datum?" Almost nobody uses that in the vernacular.
Eh, devils advocate: when a word becomes more of a loan word than just a usage of its proper origin, doesn’t it make sense to follow the new languages patterns?
Different grammatical situation of course but similar in spirit is “latte.” It just means milk in Italian and so in Italy you’d always say cafe latte. But in the states everyone knows it as the coffee drink (Starbucks probably to blame).
Same with salsa—just means sauce in Spanish—but it’s become an English word in the states at this point and taken a different meaning.
I've seen (older) German texts where "Jesus" is declined as in Latin, eg "the apostles Jesu" (=of Jesus, genitive) or "We saw Jesum" (=accusative). Somewhat jarring. As you say - when do you stop?
LEGOs makes sense; a LEGO is an indivisible entity, of which you can have a certain number. Calling the material simply LEGO makes it sound like an undifferentiated mass, like sludge, or cheese.
IIUC, that seems to be saying "don't write sentences in this structure" rather than "here's how it would look if you did write it". (Though it would seem strange for a manual to dictate the grammar for its own name.)
Following the example of Big Mac sandwiches (not Big Macs) I believe you'd write McDonald's restaurants' (not McDonald's'). I.E. always keep the trademarked word as-is, add sandwich or other nouns where needed to make the grammar work.
I think the confusion in this thread and elsewhere makes it clear why companies release brand guides.
Yeah, but companies don't get to decide how language is used. Apple can try all they want to demand that people say shit like "Use iPad to do it" or "Experience iPad" but that's just what they want and they can't stop people using English without their toxic marketing BS. Saying "Use an iPad to do it" is completely acceptable language and more in line with existing language no-matter what Apple marketing says.
It is a regular, but not universal, occurrence for people to elide the extra possessive 's when the word already ends in s.
For example, although adding a possessive suffix 's to the nane "Jordan" would result in "Jordan's," adding it to "James" could result in "James'". There's an apostrophe written at the end, but it's pronounced the same way as "James."
I said it's not universal because I still know people who would say "James's" (with an extra syllable at the end) in everyday speech anyway. I don't know to what extent this varies by dialect.
It's also elided when a plural already ends in s (and I think this is universal, but I haven't looked it up). For example, "the doctor's computer" (the computer of one doctor) sounds the same as "the doctors' computers" (the computers owned by the doctors). The apostrophe is written on the other side of the s, but it also sounds the same. Note that not all plurals end in s, e.g. man/men, woman/women, goose/geese, etc., and in these cases you still add the s, e.g. "the geese's beaks".
Interesting side note: Aldi is not called Aldi in Austria (it's "Hofer" there, which blew my mind as a kid since the logo is the same), because the Aldi trademark belonged to "Adel Lebensmittel Diskont" there.
Hm. Been at the Aldi-Äquator in the 90ies, which is the division between Aldi-North and South in Germany. So one could pick 'branches' from the overlap there, and compare. Which was really different at the time.
Anyway, I remember the talks about that fear of being marked poor. It was all a load of BS as you could see from the parked cars, and style of clothing of shoppers.
Similar to BILD.de perceived as trash-tabloid, nonetheless having the largest circulation.
That's interesting, because the customers at Aldi here in Germany are basically a cross-section of the population, but tend to be middle/higher middle class. Especially after the update to most of their shops during the last 7-8 years [0], most Aldis look really nice inside. This combined with the huge advantage that shopping at Aldi is really efficient (the stores are not large, for most items, you have only a single option to select from which usually has an excellent quality, and the cashiers are arguably the fastest in the industry) makes Aldi very attractive for people who could easily afford shopping at a non-discounter. Sure, I enjoy the occasional hour-long visit to a large supermarket with the family on a weekend, but after work? I want my shopping done in 10 minutes max without selecting from 30 brands of pasta and go home.
At least in larger cities, the average Lidl often looks a bit run-down and grimy, and the customers tend to be lower class (that's not the case in rural areas, however). I always found that interesting, because prices / quality are basically equivalent (although I tend to prefer Aldi products). I live near the border to France, and the situation there appears to be similar.
At least a few years ago, however, Aldis in Switzerland also looked very run-down (though not as run-down as Denner) with distinctly lower-class customers and a much larger focus on selling alcohol than in Germany.
Dutch here, worked a few years in Germany. I can attest to the difference in esteem of the Aldi/Lidl in de and nl. But you already agree: German shops just look run down as a matter of course. Rewe and Edeka the least probably?
However (I've lived some years in FR and PL too), nothing beats Dutch supermarkets in terms of shopping-speed. Nowhere. If you think (German) Aldi is fast, you should try a Dutch shop (preferably in the city around rush hour so you can see it shines under pressure). As a low anchor, you can try the same in France (any brand, but Lidl too) ;) This includes stock: Dutch supermarkets are rarely out of something, but in Germany this is par for the course (or I am extremely unlucky?)
Also, and this is actually quite true for the Netherlands as well, there is a quality problem. It can be good, but it rarely is great. The French (and Belgians) really have that beat, at the cost of speed. Only fresh veg and bread is where Lidl shines, and I love them for it.
From a Dutch perspective :) You should see what foam they consider bread. One of the things I miss from France :) Lidl has a batard that is really quite good, unsurpassed by any Dutch bread.
You haven't had bad bread if you've never had Dutch bread. That includes virtually any 'bakery' (those are mostly chains who also rebake). Dutch bread is barely baked, and barely bread. Really, moulding shite and baking it is superior.
Do not get in a bad-bread-pissing contest: Dutch will win it every time.
I disagree to both to the single option to select from, and the excellent quality. For Aldi-North that is. Sampling for about 2 to 3 times a year there, since about 2014. Before that I lived there.
Acronyms under most English style guides should be written in lowercase with the first letter capitalized. Only initialisms should be in all caps, which Aldi is definitely not.
I almost always see most acronyms (not brands with an acronym origin like Aldi) in all caps, and always considered it an odd quirk of the BBC that they did not.
Editors will make exceptions to general style guidelines when they think it leads to better clarity when reading. For instance, most newspapers will write iPhone with a lower case 'i', despite that being incorrect for a proper noun, because people are used to seeing it that way.
I can't read the link but we've the same thing in Ireland. I've always assumed it stemed from shops being family owned. e.g. We have a stationary store that was originally called Eason and Sons which when said quickly sounds like Easons.
There'a s few other examples but that's the one that always stood out to me
> Actually it's 'Aldis', because we're talking about more than one.
Just to clarify why this is wrong. First we are not talking about more than one, there is only one "Aldi" company.
We don't use Aldi's (notice the use of the ' for possessive after a single noun) in this case even though every company name is a proper noun which would follow this rule. It's not used because the Price Map is not belonging to Aldi, it is a price map "FOR" Aldi.
We are talking about multiple Aldi stores. I don't know if Aldi US is one company, or a franchise, or something in between. But I'm pretty certain they have more than one store.
https://www.ksn.com/news/national-world/why-do-people-add-s-...