I never said my language was any better, Danish is horribly difficult to learn or so I've been told. If you want an example of a language that has structure and strict rules regarding grammar, German is your answer.

 

Or Hindi, methinks. ;-)

But this is pet peeves, let us not let it degrade into linguistic chauvinism.

 

The rules for possessive apostrophes are actually very consistent by English language standards: add "'s" for all singular noun possessives unless it's an ancient proper noun, in which case you have the option of just tagging on an apostrophe (e.g. Isis' monster titties). Plural nouns ending in 's' take an apostrophe. Pronominal pronouns (yours, hers, its, ours, theirs) have no apostrophe.

I think the main reason apostrophes are mangled in written English is that the vast majority of the time there's really no ambiguity whether an author uses apostrophes correctly or not, meaning that their proper use doesn't enhance communication meaningfully. Authors can afford to be lazy since everyone knows what they meant anyway.

 

I do know where to add possessive apostrophes, though they're a pain in the ass despite being somewhat consistent. I was making a generalization of the English language and grammar to explain why non-native speakers might not be the best at it because most of the rules have a massive amount of exceptions etc.

 

I hate it when authors put commas outside of speech marks when writing dialogue.

 

The comma at the end of the speech. Every time I see it I cringe.

 

Do you mean like this?:

Or like this?:

 

Like this:

Maybe I've spent too much time on ff.net but I feel like I see it in a significant percentage of stories.

 

Wait...

A character making a younger female his sex slave is an interesting twist? I thought it was pretty much almost mandatory in FF when an author doesn't have a real plot.

 

What I think you meant to say was putting the comma outside of the quotation marks, not ending speech with a comma.

 

I suppose it could be considered an interesting twist, in a real story that is.
You know, one with a plotline beyond "one day Harry used a magic spell that made his dick bigger, then he fucked bitches while being super awesome, the end."

Cedric is generally portrayed as a not-shitty person, I honestly can't think of fic I've read that cast him in a negative light, even the cliche bash everyone stories generally spare him by virtue of taking place after he's dead.

So if I was reading a fifth year fic, Harry is doing his thing crushing on Cho and Cho is doing her thing crying over Cedric. Then while trying to figure out how to make her feel better Harry finds out that Cedric was actually a creepy sexual predator sociopath that had completely mindfucked her, I'd be pretty shocked.

Then suddenly in addition to his angsting over whether or not he should blame himself for getting Cedric killed he can angst over whether or not he should be happy Cedric is dead and whether or not he's a terrible person for even considering that, because if there's one thing fifth year fics need, it's more things for Harry to angst over.

 

That would be a damn interesting oneshot.

 

Horrible language, German.

Ich bevorzuge Englisch.

 

Absolutely! At least, academic German

In my field, I'm been told by native German scholars that they will wait for a German book/article to be translated into English before they read it, because it's easier to read.

A friend of mine had a native German speaker help her with a translation (same field). The translator shook her head and said, "I really have no idea."

One thing to say about English, whether it's academic or regular English, it's pretty easy to read in general, unless the person is purposefully being verbose and obtuse.

So, yeah, a Pet Peeve of mine (None FF) is academic German.

 

I can second that. Just finished reading an article about metric in poems. At some parts the sentences run on for several lines so that you forget the beginning when you arrive at the end. Also, the use of vocabulary that sounds sophisticated but could be replaced with simpler words to further understanding is obnoxious.

This text in particular made me think that the author just loved to read his own words.

 

Yeah, me too, but that's because I have a natural inclination towards it.(or so I've been told)

I have no idea about academic German though I did notice the run-on sentences got worse and worse. Dropped it as soon as I could... which was five years too late in my opinion.
I was merely talking about structure and rules. Simple sentences in German are really easy and the rules of grammar provide a framework on how to construct your sentence. English doesn't provide this to the same extent and is much more unpredictable.

 

Definitely agree about academic German. In my first semester at University we actually had a course called "Wissenschafliches Schreiben und Präsentieren" where we learned among other things how to take these convoluted sentences apart and get to the gist of it. Most of the sentences that stretched over several lines before and had to be read several times to be understood could be simplified to much shorter, easily understandable sentences. To me it seems that in academic German being able to write complicated and unintelligible sentences using as many 'sophisticated' words as possible is often confused with expertise and intelligence.

 

German is a headache. English is almost always easy, and if you read it enough you can get a feel of the language. I always felt that Portuguese was much harder, with accents and such. Accents on words, not speech differences.