this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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In German people tend to increase "only" (das einzige). As in, they say something is the "onliest" (das einzigste). It's usually a good indicator of someone's education.
In many regions it is common to do comparisons with "as" (wie). As in "My dog is bigger as yours" instead of "My dog is bigger than yours". The most infuriating thing about this is that most people doing that mistake don't even acknowledge that it is one. At least people who say "onliest" can be convinced that it is wrong.
Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive. Like in "Anna's food is good". In German that should be written as "Annas Essen ist gut". But due to many people making the same mistake (I guess also because we're used to it from English sentences) it has been allowed to use an apostrophe. So in that case I'm just a grumpy old guy.
Even technically I'd consider it an error - the genitive/"possessive" apostrophe in English highlights that you're dealing with a clitic, attached to the end of the noun phrase; e.g. the dog**'s** food` โ the dog and the cat**'s** food. In German however it doesn't behave like a clitic, it's a plain declension; e.g. das Futter des Hundes โ das Futter des Hundes und der Katze - you're switching words, not moving them.
I wonder if that's because most people nowadays use von+Dative instead.
Not a native speaker, so I could be wrong about this:
I've seen a construction using proper nouns (eg. Annas Haus) where an "s" indicates possession, but no apostrophe. This doesn't seem to apply to non-proper nouns (das Haus der Frau) and is different from normal genitive construction that adds an "s" to masc/neut noun genders (das Haus des Mannes)