Apostophy?

[citoyen]

Or, if you're a Brel fan: Rosa, Rosa, Rosam...

I never learnt Latin at school but I found learning German very helpful in acquiring a better understanding of English grammar.

d.

[Julian]

Yes, German's similar, so is Latin and (unsurprisingly) Old Norse.  I imagine Mr Bunbury used the Caecilius books which were heavy on the puellas for learning verbs.  This is now also in my head. 

I like to imagine Anglo-Saxons moaning about how immigrants were ruining the language. 

[Kim]

I never learnt Latin at school but I found learning German very helpful in acquiring a better understanding of English grammar.

I never learnt English^[1] at school but I found learning German very helpful in acquiring a better understanding of English grammar.

And thanks, Julian, for that nugget of enlightenment.  I do like it when things make sense^[2].


_{[1] I was of the generation where English Language lessons were effectively the same as Literature, without the books, and we were supposed to absorb grammar by osmosis, or something.
[2] So not, for example, school English lessons...}

[Ian H]

Yes, German's similar, so is Latin and (unsurprisingly) Old Norse.  I imagine Mr Bunbury used the Caecilius books which were heavy on the puellas for learning verbs.  This is now also in my head. 

I like to imagine Anglo-Saxons moaning about how immigrants were ruining the language. 

Or languages, as it's probably that villages more than a few valleys apart would have had difficulty understanding each other.

Overheard recently in my local [you'll have to imagine the Devonshire dialect]: "I can understand Dorset. I lived there for a while, and I can still speak it a bit."

[clarion]

I believe Chaucer used the 'his' construction.  Piers Plowman, too, if memory serves (it may not).

[Julian]

Which was a left-dislocation after noun endings mostly became obsolete and is first seen at the beginning of the fifteenth century.  The 'his' construction was then already being criticised as wrong by early grammarians, although one linguist (and one alone, I should point out) reckons it's the 'hypercorrect' variant of the inflected s-genitive.¹

By the time we get to Chaucer and the Pearl manuscript, Anglo-Saxon constructions are centuries out of date. 



¹p.310, Anette Rosenbach, Topics in English Linguistics.

[clarion]

Ah, that makes more sense.

ftr, I love German.  It's not a silly language.

[Karla]

Yes, German's similar, so is Latin and (unsurprisingly) Old Norse.  I imagine Mr Bunbury used the Caecilius books which were heavy on the puellas for learning verbs.  This is now also in my head. 

I like to imagine Anglo-Saxons moaning about how immigrants were ruining the language. 

Caecelius est in horto.

Bonus points go to Citoyen for including the ablative, but minus points to Julian for thinking that puella is a verb. 

[Julian]

Ah, that makes more sense.

ftr, I love German.  It's not a silly language.

English is a thoroughly silly language, and we cling to the idea that it's not difficult because it's lightly inflected, when in fact it's just anarchic.  But following the history of how the language developed was a geeky pleasure at university.  The rest of my group hated that stuff and I thought it was fascinating. 

Yes, German's similar, so is Latin and (unsurprisingly) Old Norse.  I imagine Mr Bunbury used the Caecilius books which were heavy on the puellas for learning verbs.  This is now also in my head. 

I like to imagine Anglo-Saxons moaning about how immigrants were ruining the language. 

Caecelius est in horto.

Bonus points go to Citoyen for including the ablative, but minus points to Julian for thinking that puella is a verb. 

Noun: girl.  Did I write verb?  I did.  Oops. 

[jane]

I guess its might illustrate the genitive case origins quite well.  In it's it's an apostrophe of omission.  In its its omission is an indicator of the genitive.
If you see what I mean. (Not sure I do). 
I know one thing, it's one thing I won't miss teaching when I retire.

EDITED to make what I meant a bit clearer.  No?  Well.  Exactly.

[clarion]

I just thought that puellae* appeared regularly in sentences showing usages of verbs.



* Is that right?  I ain't got the Latin for the Judgin' </Peter Cook>

[hairyhippy]

I have this friend who had a terrible English teacher at school who had left my friend with an almost pathological distrust of punctuation.

Does anyone know of a really good resource on punctuation / grammar that I could point my friend at?

[Julian]

Yes: the Usborne Guide to English Grammar.

Seriously.  It might be a children's book, but it was on my English degree course reading list along with some massively weighty tomes, because none of us had done grammar at school.  It's simple to use and covers all the stuff you might actually need in daily usage.

[red marley]

I know she seems to inspire a lot of contempt in people, but you might recommend Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" to your friend. It's not a reference book as such, but its popular style at least makes you want to read it.

I also quite like the Guardian's style guide. It's not limited to punctuation but is a readable reference guide also available in handy paperback format.

[citoyen]

its popular style at least makes you want to read it.

Speak for yourself.

d.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Does anyone know of a really good resource on punctuation / grammar that I could point my friend at?

Fowler's 'A dictionary of Modern English Use'.

It's not a book to read, but a dictionary. Something to pull out when you're not sure.

Written in Victorian times, it's far more accessible and less dry than many 'modern' books.

[Ian H]

its popular style at least makes you want to read it.

Speak for yourself.

d.

The Americans (with whom we share a language) even criticised the punctuation of the title.

[Arch]

Do I hear, "Ye's"?

A few weeks ago, I saw a car pulling a trailer which presumably usually held a vintage motorbike, because a sign on it said:

" I'ts a 1958 Triumph Goldstar "

(the make of bike may be wrong due to poor memory)

[rogerzilla]

OK...why is it Bridget Jones's Diary but Levi Stubbs' Tears?  Eh?

[Ian H]

OK...why is it Bridget Jones's Diary but Levi Stubbs' Tears?  Eh?

Two different commonly accepted usages. I don't like the second (eg. Jones'). I seem to recall it being frowned upon except in the case of Jesus, who traditionally takes an unaccompanied apostrophe.

Edit: should have added: God knows why.

[arabella]

Not in my day, either sere deemed OK.  (Jones' and Jones's, not to be confused with Joneses' which of course refers to more than on Jones)

[citoyen]

I seem to recall it being frowned upon except in the case of Jesus, who traditionally takes an unaccompanied apostrophe.

I vaguely remember being taught something similar - Jesus and ancient Greeks (both real and mythological), iirc.

I expect it's one of those rules like not splitting an infinitive that's based on something from classical education and is best ignored in the 21st century.

Apostrophe-no-S (eg Bridget Jones' Diary) is house style for the publication I work on. I don't like it but house style is more about consistency than correctness. Other publications have apostrophe-S in their style guide (Bridget Jones started in the Independent, iirc, so if the "correct" form is Bridget Jones's Diary, all that means is that their house style is apostrophe-S).

My job description includes guardianship of the style guide and I could, in theory, change the rules if I wished. However, they predate me and it would be difficult to implement such changes for reasons that are too tedious to explain here, so we're stuck with apostrophe-no-S.

d.

[Pickled Onion]

OK...why is it Bridget Jones's Diary but Levi Stubbs' Tears?  Eh?

Two different commonly accepted usages. I don't like the second (eg. Jones'). I seem to recall it being frowned upon except in the case of Jesus, who traditionally takes an unaccompanied apostrophe.

Edit: should have added: God knows why.

No idea how true it is, but I was taught that where there are already two s's esses letter s sounds in the word, adding another makes it sound clumsy. As in "Jesus's disciples". So the example above follows that, even though Stubbs's doesn't sound wrong. It sounds like a fudge to me - one could not write "... how many Jesuses were there?" in any other way.

[Julian]

Stubbs's doesn't sound wrong because it ends with the /z/ morpheme despite being written with an s. 

[HTFB]

A genuine pedant will of course tell you (aphetically, by naming the editor) which edition of Fowler he is quoting from, or simply recite all three:

Fowler:

It was formerly customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s, e.g. Mars' hill, Venus' Bath, Achilles' thews. In verse, & in poetic or reverential contexts, this custom is retained, & the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case, e.g. Achilles' has three, not four; Jesus' or of Jesus, not Jesus's. But elsewhere we now add the s & the syllable, Charles's Wain, St James's not St James', Jones's children, the Rev. Septimus's surplice, Pythagoras's doctrines.

Gowers:

It was formerly customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s, e.g. Mars' hill, Venus' Bath, Achilles' thews. In verse, and in poetic or reverential contexts, this custom is retained, and the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case, e.g. Achilles' has three, not four; Jesus' two, not three. But elsewhere we now add the s and the syllable---always when the word is monosyllabic, and preferably when it is longer, Charles's Wain, St James's Street, Jones's children, the Rev. Septimus's surplice, Pythagoras's doctrines. Plurals of proper names ending s form their possessives in the same way as ordinary plurals (the Joneses' home, the Rogerses' party).

Burchfield:

• Personal names. Use 's for the possessive case in English names and surnames wherever possible; i.e. in all monosyllables and disyllables, and in longer words accented on the penult, as Burns's, Charles's, Cousins's, Dickens's, Hicks's, St James's Square, Thomas's, Zacharias's. It is customary, however, to omit the 's when the last syllable of the name is pronounced /iz/, as in Bridges', Moses'. Jesus' is an acceptable archaism.
• Classical names. In classical names use s' (not s's): Mars', Herodotus', Venus'. Classical names ending in -es are usually written -es' in the possessive: Ceres' rites, Xerxes' fleet; similarly Demosthenes', Euripedes', Socrates', Themistocles'.

Burchfield however is tediously committed to recording, rather than defining, proper usage and is reluctant to condemn even the greengrocer's apostrophe---which for some ill-thought-through reason, indeed, he calls the greengrocers' apostrophe.

I am not certain that even pedants need give Burchfield shelf-room.