Puncture of German Pride and Prejudice - It's apostrophic!
Language purists in Germany are up in arms over what they see as a linguistic invasion of the Anglophone apostrophe used in the genitive case to indicate ownership or possession, which is called Deppenapostroph — idiot's apostrophe — in German.
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
