Earlier this year, the official body that regulates the use of Standard High German relaxed the traditional proscription of the apostrophe to denote belonging. Following this, the new edition of the Council for German Orthography’s style guide, which prescribes grammatical correctness for schools and government agencies in the country, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland, permits the usage of Eva’s Blumenladen (Eva’s Flower shop) and Peter’s Taverne (Peter’s Bar).
The official recognition given to the genitive apostrophe is bowing to the inevitable. Signs displaying ‘Rosi’s Bar’ and ‘Kati’s Kiosk’ have been commonplace in Germany, though according to tradition they ought to be ‘Rosis Bar’ and ‘Katis Kiosk’.
The carte blanche given to the possessive apostrophe has outraged champions of linguistic tradition. A correspondent writing in the tabloid, Bild, fumed that a sign like ‘Harald’s Eck’ (Harald’s Corner) caused his ‘hair to stand on end’. A columnist in the august broadsheet, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, decried the incursion of the apostrophe as a ‘victory march’ of the English language, and another commentator called it ‘genuflecting to English’.
However, the apostrophe does have its defenders. They point out that it provides nominal clarification, in that ‘Karim’s Kebabs’ makes it clear that the establishment belongs to a person called Karim, not Karims.
This is not the first time that the genitive apostrophe – as distinct from the apostrophe of elision, as in ‘can’t’ for ‘cannot’ – has been embroiled in a topical imbroglio. On the sidelines of the tumult and shouting attendant upon the recent US presidential election, pundits were at loggerheads about whether the Democrat contestant ought to have her campaign referred to as ‘Kamala Harris’ campaign’ or ‘Kamala Harris’s campaign’.The debate opened an old can of S-shaped worms regarding the possessive apostrophe when it comes to names ending in an ‘s’. Should it be Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount?The single ‘s’ proponents cited examples from newspapers and periodicals dating back to the mid-19th century. The double ‘s’ advocates argued that written or printed language should reflect the way words are spoken. We say ‘Jesus-es’ Sermon on the Mount, not ‘Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
To further confound the issue there is also what is called the English ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’ where an apostrophe is mistakenly used to form a plural, as in ‘a pound of tomato’s’. In India, the greengrocer’s apostrophe is often unintentionally used on residential nameplates, like Kumar’s or Goyal’s, to indicate that a family by that name, and not just an individual, lives there.
To stem the tide of such creeping Anglicisms, a Dortmund-based organisation, Verein Deutsche Sprache (German Language Association), which seeks to safeguard the German language, has proposed Teutonic alternatives to Anglo-Saxon words, like ‘Klapprechner’ for laptop, and ‘Puffmais’ for popcorn.
To add a further twist to the apostrophe’s tale, there is the rhetorical apostrophe, derived from the Greek ‘apostrephein’ – to turn away – which refers to a monologue addressed to an absent person or an inanimate object. Hamlet might muse, ‘To apostrophe or not to apostrophe? That is the question’, when he speaks to poor Yorick’s skull. Or should that be poor Yoricks skull, in Germanys case? Achtung! Gotterdammerung!