Pedants' safe-house

[oldbutgold]

In view of the strong feeling expressed towards inveterate error-spotters (aka passive-aggressive bullies/pedants/twats etc) what about a thread for all the spelling errors/grammatical mistakes seen stricly outside MN in RL?
Like journalist Keith Waterhouse who was president of the AAA - campaigned throughout his career for the Abolition of the Abhorrent Apostrophe.
Spotted by self recently:

Ladie's hairdressers (in town)
Childrens' Society (on BBC)
10 items or less (everywhere)

OK - I was just confused.

However, if you follow that argument to its logical conclusion, shouldn't we be pluralising every Latin-derived word according to Latin?

Or rather, at some point, do we stop treating the word as a Latin word? Incidentally, do you post on fora or forums?

Argh! I'm not saying lose all Latin influence! I'm saying that your appeal to the rules lacks credence, because many Latin loan words have acquired anglicized endings by analogy - you're arguing for retaining Latin grammatical forms for a relatively small number. And why not retain old Norse plurals? Or French? Or Hindi?

English is a germanic language in origin, though it's no longer governed gramatically by case endings, so is less like its cognates than it was. Many of our basic, familiar words also come from Old Norse, like skirt, she, and possibly ship. Latin and French loanwords dominate legal language and the like. There are a lot of these loanwords, sure, but not as enormous a percentage as you might think - the relationship between English and Latin has generally been overstated, whereas most people are utterly unaware of the huge influence of Old Norse, which was one of the key reasons English moved from being a largely synthetic language (case endings, flexible word order) to a largely analytic one (sense governed by word order, few case endings). Compared to that, the influence of Latin is pretty poxy.

I knew Habbibu would be able to put it more eloquently!

Or less succinctly, sings...

Thank you Habbibu. You are my saviour. I knew there was a better way to put my argument, and that is it.

That's very kind of you. I feared I'd been babbling like a fool. It's been known. Frequently.

I found this interesting article about the origin of the apostrophe which states that the 's doesn't stand for the contraction his but rather is due to its germanic language origins (genetive case).

Longtime - i said that ages ago!

(but only for possessive - the 's in contracted words still stands for the words missed out)
(and it is a contraction, if you think about it - it's a contraction of his....)

anyway, i came back to the thread today to remark on my discovery in SAinsbury's yesterday.

A big centrally-made poster about Strawberries:

"by doing blah blah blah we're saving 300 tones of plastic every year"

tones!
not a weight, as far as i can recall....
are these musical strawberry wrappers?

i had to report it to a manager.

nickelbabe, this article states that the 's DOESN'T stand for the contraction his but rather is due to the germanic language origins of English (genetive case).

ROFL at tones!

oh, i see what you mean! i thought you meant that its origin was the germanic rules governing his! oops!

but then that would mean we are doing it wrong, because the genetive doesn't have an apostrophe. and, i was taught to avoid using the s version where possible and to try to use the... of ... instead. i remember my A-level teacher used to frown on it too, and she did linguistics as her degree.

I guess the of version is more formal, but there's nothing wrong with the 's version.

What do you mean, the genitive doesn't have an apostrophe? I'm a bit puzzled, and think I'm missing something - there's no genitive case per se in modern English (in that it isn't a language with morphological case markers), but there is a possessive whose 's marker derives from the Anglo-Saxon -es genitive ending. So the ' in 's refers in general to the missing "e", and is therefore ok.

It always amazes me that big companies like Sainsbury's don't appear to employ proofreaders.

I have just stumbled upon this gem of a thread and am sorry I didn't see it begin (can't quite have the brainpower to read it all!).

I know it's mostly devoted to the mis-sue of the apostrophe, but could I share my pet hate with you?

"Almost (or nearly) unique".

It's either unique or it isn't. Arg! You see that everywhere too!

And now my favourite apostrophe error on a sign near my home:

Terrys Tyre's

Ahhhhh bless!!!

Oh and a coffee shop that sells:
Coffees
Teas
Sandwiche's
Cakes

I mean...REALLY...why?!!!

Oh and in the nightmare of the World Cup all these football matches are being held in STADIA...NOT stadiums...

Better go to bed before I totally hijack the thread!

x

WheresMyWaistGone, I could kiss you for knowing the meaning of unique.

I find myself screaming at the TV about not being able to quantify it on a depressingly regular basis.

Wheres - you clearly missed the bunfight over Latin grammatical endings and assmiliation of loanwords into English...

Habbibu, this is the relevant part of the article nickelbabe and I were referring to:

Contractions

When our grammar was being formalised, the possessive simply had an ?S? on the end: ?Chaucers book?, ?the dogs bone.? An apostrophe was added because grammarians assumed that a contraction had taken place, that ?Chaucers book? was a contraction of ?Chaucer his book.? This might seem fairly odd, but the use of ?his? to make a rather lumbering possessive was an established part of English usage ? eg, ?Sir Philip Sidney His Arcadia.? Even as late as the nineteenth century a character in Tom Brown?s Schooldays signs a piece of paper with the words ?Harry East his mark.?

Anglo-Saxon Inflections

In fact this addition of an apostrophe was based on a false assumption. The possessive ?s? was not a shortened version of the word ?his?, but an inflection left over from Anglo-Saxon. Like those in Latin, Anglo-Saxon words altered their endings depending on how they were being used, and the genitive case (the possessive) stuck an ?s? on the end. (This also incidentally explains why ?mary her book? and ?the parliament their opinion? came to be expressed with an apostrophe and an ?s?, despite the word ?his? not appearing in either phrase.)

So nickelbabe you were, in fact, right. The apostrophe was added presuming it was a contraction of his but it was, in fact, this assumption that was incorrect and not you!

Lumme. That's complicated stuff about the apostrophe. But very interesting.

"quite unique", "slightly unique", "very unique" - guaranteed apoplectic result here as well. Not sure about "almost unique" - that's a bit like nearly dead, it's not quite there so should be allowable, no?

I had to read a history of punctuation as part of my PhD. I can remember absolutely nothing of it...

A personal favourite is a 'duel roll' (dual role) on a CV.

Is math's ever correct (contraction ? for missing letters)?

We get school newsletters with 'math's' a lot.

Many seem to think a lot is one word: alot, a huge amount it seems.

Habibu:
"What do you mean, the genitive doesn't have an apostrophe? I'm a bit puzzled, and think I'm missing something - there's no genitive case per se in modern English (in that it isn't a language with morphological case markers), but there is a possessive whose 's marker derives from the Anglo-Saxon -es genitive ending. So the ' in 's refers in general to the missing "e", and is therefore ok. "

i meant in German the genetive doesn't have a n apostrophe.
so if you said "mary's horse", you can say "das Pferd von Mary" or "Marys Pferd"
no apostrophe.

i hoep that makes sense !

i firmly stand by Wheresmywaistgone.

stadia [pphhhhrrrrffffttthththth]

Longtime - phew! i hate being wrong!

that's a very interesting article.
at some point i shall endeavour to read it in full.

ooh, that reminds me of a funny thing we were told in German lessons.

the english language is so complicated - the future tense and usage of will or shall is a good example.
a foreigner learning the language found to his dismay that he was using them the wrong way round - he was drowning in a river, and shouted to a passer-by - "Sir, I will drown and no one shall save me!" the passer-by thought "fair enough, as you wish" and carried on walking, leaving the foreigner to drown.
of course, that's a bit extreme, but it explains that the "will" is a deliberate intention and that the "shall" is just what's going to happen.
he should have said "I shall drown and no one will save me" to be telling the passer-by that he wanted to be saved.
Of course, he really should have saved all of the problems with grammar by just shouting "help!"

Ah, ok, thanks, nickelbabe. On stadia, you can have it if you reject the "s" plurals for other assimilated loans.

which ones?

i say agenda, fora (but get told off for it...), criteria etc.

i use the correct ending if i know it. (does that count?)

Ok - um - cheese, city, magistrate, janitor, area, abdomen, peninsula, physician - all Latin.

And then violin, pizza and umbrella from Italian, cake and egg from Old Norse. If you want more, let me know!