Grammar pedants - help please.
3 lurkers |
95 watchers
Mar 2021
1:26pm, 19 Mar 2021
20,756 posts
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ChrisHB
English spelling, so I was once taught, was defined with the purpose that if words had the misfortune to be homophones, they could at least be spelled differently.
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Mar 2021
1:33pm, 19 Mar 2021
13,818 posts
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larkim
They're right there with their analysis, your teacher, Chris.
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Mar 2021
2:21pm, 19 Mar 2021
15,644 posts
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RichHL
Possessive pronouns made more sense to me once I'd learned about cases in inflected languages.
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Mar 2021
2:36pm, 19 Mar 2021
45,752 posts
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LindsD
I was taught it was Jesus's
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Mar 2021
2:39pm, 19 Mar 2021
13,846 posts
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Cerrertonia
Yes, the etymology of he/she, his/her, him/her, his/hers is all tied up with the way gender and case worked in Old English, which had inflected pronouns. We didn't lose gender for nouns until the 13th century, we didn't get a/an, the with their current meanings until around the same time. They, their, them, theirs came from Norse, not Old English.
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Mar 2021
2:52pm, 19 Mar 2021
7,479 posts
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Northern Exile
I'm with Rich there - possessive pronouns made a lot more sense once I'd learned another language to a reasonable degree of competence. And yes, I was also taught Jesus's [followers] 
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Mar 2021
3:10pm, 19 Mar 2021
20,758 posts
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ChrisHB
I was taught it is ok to say Jesus's, Moses's, but to write them without the final S. But if referring to a present-day figure with those names, I think also to add the S in writing. |
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Mar 2021
3:10pm, 19 Mar 2021
20,759 posts
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ChrisHB
And there was also the habit of abbreviating Jesus to Jesu, handily giving Jesu's as the possessive.
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Mar 2021
3:20pm, 19 Mar 2021
13,822 posts
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larkim
Interesting, I'd always had the Moses' drummed into me. Or maybe it's so long ago that I've just made up my own rules!
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Mar 2021
6:04pm, 19 Mar 2021
13,816 posts
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JK *chameleon*
Often, reading this thread makes me wish I could return to school and learn again. My English Language teaching was woeful when I was young, and it made me a poor Languages student when I studied French and German - I'd love now to actually learn some things properly! Maybe I just miss learning in general - 18 years outside of education and trapped in a mundane but stressful job - I was always supposed to do better! |
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