Plural and Possessives

[gsdx]

Mouse - mice
House - hice
Goose - geese
Moose - meese

 

[rareboy]

English words are a pain in the arse.
Other languages are abit simpler.

Example of other languages:
1 dog, afew dog, many dog
1 fish, afew fish, many fish

What put an S after the word ?

What you think of as being simpler and apparently superior, I find maddeningly imprecise.

 

[NotHardUp1]

A simple solution: Print out the most recent bulletin, correct it with a highlighter. Put it in an envelope that has her name on it and Mail it to the church. They'll see she gets it.

Swellegant's observation is a common one. As Fundamentalist churches proliferated, secretarial skills were not a high value in those denominations, nor literacy. Too often a secretary wasn't someone who was a natural with language, but some pretty thing who went to school to get an MRS degree or just a person who had the connections to get the job but not particularly literate.

I've seen it many times. Sending the proof in an email wouldn't trigger any return to learning or proofing, only assure the woman that she had enemies in her perch running the church office.

 

[Yooper]

Copy from a sign we have been suggested to post at the store (we haven't, but not because this sign is so bad):

POWER EQUIPMENT STORE RETURN POLICY
Once you purchase power equipment from our store, the below return policy applies.
Product can’t be returned to the store once gas and oil have been put in the machine. Please make sure you are satisfied with your purchase and are buying the piece of equipment that best fits your needs before leaving the store.
All service and warranty issues must be handled through your authorized service center so a proper diagnosis can be done on your product.
You, the consumer, are responsible for proper maintenance and use of your equipment to ensure that the manufacturer’s specified warranty is not voided.
This return policy applies to all gas powered equipment such as: tiller’s, edger’s, mowers, tractor’s, generators, chainsaws, snow blower’s and other gas powered chore equipment.

 

[NotHardUp1]

So they used them on first, second, fourth, and seventh words. Some kinda mystic series there.

 

[Yooper]

So they used them on first, second, fourth, and seventh words. Some kinda mystic series there.

 

[NotHardUp1]

.........

 

[gsdx]

This thread is over a decade old now and it seems to me that not knowing the difference between plurals and possessives now seems like a very minor grammatical error these days. An entirely new version if English is emerging and a very small portion of English speakers understand it.

 

[Yooper]

This thread is over a decade old now and it seems to me that not knowing the difference between plurals and possessives now seems like a very minor grammatical error these days. An entirely new version if English is emerging and a very small portion of English speakers understand it.

I guess we can thank the Russian spambots for resurrecting this particular necrothread.

 

[gsdx]

^ it is interesting, though, to see how much the language has changed over the past 10 years, not only in the spoken language but in the written language as well.

 

[unloadonme]

^ it is interesting, though, to see how much the language has changed over the past 10 years, not only in the spoken language but in the written language as well.

I can't say I've noticed that. So-called youth culture may very well have become even more cretinous, but I don't see changes in mainstream written or spoken English.

 

[rareboy]

Not specifically related to the original topic....but close enough.

 

[Telstra]

Example:
other languages say this:
There many people instead of
there is or there are or there was or there were many people

 

[rareboy]

Again, the lack of past and future tense in languages like Chinese is maddening.

It leads to a clumsy and imprecise expression of a state or condition.

 

[Telstra]

Again, the lack of past and future tense in languages like Chinese is maddening.

It leads to a clumsy and imprecise expression of a state or condition.

No, the are more accurate by saying ''last night or yesterday or before or years ago or tomorrow or 1 months from now ... etc''
way way more accurate than past or future tense.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

Frankly I don't give a shit if kids learn to spell as long as they're learning to think. Which they're not doing either...

You cannot have one without the other. To learn how to think they must learn how to read and how to write. Illiterates have fewer opportunities to learn, to think, and to learn how to think.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

I try to have a certain amount of patience with those for whom English is a second or even fourth language, but my patience only extends so far. Eventually I just tune out.

In my circle of friends and acquaintances, I encounter fewer spelling errors made by the English-as-a-second-language crowd from anywhere in Europe or Asia than from the native speakers in the UK and above all the USA. American education must be worthless if it cannot teach its pupils to write a single language correctly, while most European schools manage to achieve this in at least two languages, usually three and occasionally four.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

There is another anomaly - non-countable nouns! For example sheep and cattle.

Sheep is a countable noun: one sheep, two sheep. The plural is identical to the singular, but that doesn't make it uncountable.

 

[NotHardUp1]

This is the one.