Why do we still have so many apostrophes in English?

[Boliviabae]

It takes so much longer to type anything on the phone.

Apostrophe's were originally in place to show two words shortened into one. But the shortened versions of the words have been in the English langauge for so long now, why do we need the apostrophes.

The word 'Dont' for example, is easily understandable, without an apostrophe.

Yes, that's my point.

She said that removing the apostrophe from I'm to make it Im wouldn't cause any problems, as there's no other use of the word Im. The placement of the apostrophe does make a difference.

Lol. So weird.

What would you call a non serious question?

First they came for the semi colon….

It's actually more like an upside-down apostrophe, called an okina. It's important because it represents a glottal stop. Like the given name Satu'u'u. Almost all Polynesian languages have them, with Te Reo Māori as the notable exception. But yeah, without the okina (') the names would be pronounced completely differently.

I feel the same about the u that follow a q. There is always one so why don't we all agree that q is pronounced like qu then we will save letters. Qestion, Qest,

To be fair I don’t think you’re a great judge of what is or isn’t correct English.

I find it very distracting to read work emails and see errors with apostrophes being used in plurals. The eye is drawn to them. On some instances they are used in plurals but not many.

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To be fair there were a couple of typos in that post, so on that occasion she had a point. Otherwise not.

Well I can definitely see the irony in the posters saying to me that my English is bad, while they use absolutely terrible English themselves.

I have fadas in my name and never bother using them. There's no point - nobody can pronounce my name properly anyway! The apostrophe is an integral part of the English language though. If we do this then what next? Do we abolish commas so things are made even easier simpler quicker and faster?

Do we use them for contractions more than other languages? The French contract with apostrophes if the word begins with a vowel all the time (l'eau, d'il, j'aime, c'est, etc). Although of course their other contractions just make whole new words (a+le = au, a+les = aux) which seems far more difficult than a simple apostrophe.

Back to English if you got rid of the apostrophe then some contractions are the same as another word. She'd and she'd, we're and were, we'd and wed, she'll and shell. Keeping the apostrophe just makes sense.

Ah come on, I agreed with you that there were typos in that post. Not the others though.

We don't, really, they're just in some very commonly used words.

How come we use more than other languages do?

English really doesn't compared to languages that use apostrophes to represent glottal stops and similar breaks, and when it comes to transliterating some languages to Latin script, some end up very apostrophe heavy - like some of the recent attempts by the Kazakh government to move from the Cyrillic script to the Latin script used apostrophes to cover a lot of gaps.

I sympathise with people who are dyslexic, but for everyone else there is really no excuse for not knowing the difference between where and were and we're, or their, they're and there and things like that. It's primary school stuff.

If, as in the case in many other parts of the world, people are able to write and speak in fluent English from a young age, native English speakers should at least put some effort into abiding by basic grammar rules, too.

And personally, reading all the barely literate gibberish you see posted on social media, or messages from men on dating apps who can't string coherent sentences together, makes my eyes want to bleed.

That post wasn't replying to you?

Should that last sentence have that many commas?

Did you mean
isnt
?

Apologies then, I thought it was, and it was a fair cop!

That's what we are debating isn't it...can we just drop the apostrophes. I would like to.

I agree with this.

So why didnt you ?

Yes. Hope that helps!

Languages evolve. Apostrophes are inconvenient, and add time to typing

Hardly that much time- this is what is going wrong in life, let’s get this done as quickly as possible- hence txt, coz, and the omission of necessary words!

No. Do you know which ones are unnecessary?