Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Postrophes


Ah yes, l’apostrophe du marchand de fruits et legumes! See, I thought that it was frightfully clever and witty to write that in French, because the British tend to think that to write in French or even in Franglais shows how frightfully clever and witty they are. Which it doesn’t.

The French, on the other hand, like this shop-owner in Avallon, make the mistake of thinking that to write in English is cool. They are wrong. It is not. Especially when you get every possible apostrophe-opportunity wrong.

Of course, the correct version of MEN’S GIRLS’ DENIM JEANS (which I suppose is as correct as it gets) is an apostrophe lesson in itself, an exciting opportunity for an apostrophe nerd like me who thinks it’s her duty to foist the gospel of the correct use of the apostrophe on an unwilling and entirely uninterested mankind.

You may well know that “an orange” began life in English some time ago as “a norange” and time moved the n across. Well, I am single-handedly trying to change the phrase to “a postrophe” rather than “an apostrophe” as in my exciting example “You need a postrophe after girls because it means the denim jeans of, or belonging to, the girls.”

You see? Much easier to say, much less clumsy! - - Oh, I can tell already that you don’t care. But some people are obsessed with fast cars and in my case it’s postrophes.

5 Comments:

Blogger John said...

Denim was originally Coton de Nimes then the words got corrupted as words tend to do.

10:17 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Please will you then deal with 'an anemone'.
The variety of possible ways to pronounce this arrangement of letters makes the corner of my left eye twitch.

4:01 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Right, I'm probably hooked now. Oh well.

5:39 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You might be interested to know that in Dutch the postrophe is used just the other way round compared to English, so Jan's skis are Jans ski's. The possessive doesn't need a postrophe, but in the plural it is used to preserve the logic of the pronunciation. Without it skis would be pronounced 'skiss' and stereos would be 'steri-oss'. English doesn't suffer from this problem, as there simply is no logic to the pronunciation. The humble postrophe is thus free to strive for a more complex purpose in life.

7:00 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do the Dutch regularly get their postrophe placement as horribly, hideously, nauseatingly wrong as the English?
English Francophiles/French Anglophiles think that the other languages gives them an air of authenticity. Now, the British invented heavy metal, and the Scandinavians, Germans &c. elaborated and created new sub-genres. The French just don't get it, bless them, but they think that calling their magazine "Hard&Heavy" will help them get it.
They are deeply wrong.

10:52 pm  

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