Klarinet Archive - Posting 000012.txt from 2000/12

From: ShawThings@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] War of the Tony`s
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 06:17:24 -0500

Neil,
you'd better stay in the closet - You're wrong!
(Except the bit about English being inconsistent).
An apostrophe, correctly used, is NEVER an indicator of plurality except in
cases where it appears after the "s" (which IS an indicator of plurality)
e.g. clarinettist (one player) clarinettists (>1) clarinettist's (one player)
clarinettists' (>1).
It's (it is) difficult enough for English (1st language speakers [speaker's])
to cope with this but it's (it is) criminal for them [e.g. Neil] to mislead
the rest of the population (a majority) by failing to get it right themselves.

As Karel correctly notes, the feral apostrophe is sadly endemic in Australia
where I'm (I am) a resident.
If you drive through almost any Australian city or town it's (it is) almost
inevitable that you'll (you will) encounter at least one establishment which
advertise's pizza's and meal's at bargain price's.
I, like Karel find this incredibly irritating, but it seems (seem's) there's
(there is) not much I or anyone else can do about it.
Personally I believe that it's (it is) the Australian Federal and State
Governments (Government's) putting Education last (or close to last) on the
list of funding priorities (priority's).
In the last position in which I was employed full-time as a tutor (in
microbiology, not English) in a local university I noticed over a period of
about 10 years that the worst offenders were usually (often very) intelligent
Australian-born children of uneducated migrants from European countries.
Most of the parents had arrived immediately postwar when labour was short in
Australia. Their failure to grasp the "subtleties" of English is the fault
of the education system, not the parents, most of whom could barely speak
English.
Sorry if I've tried to compensate for lack of eloquence by length.
& to Neil, (who should be thoroughly closeted)
you should really try to avoid posting misinformation - there are a tiny
minority of listers who seem to be willing to believe anything.
I also feel obliged to add that "US English" is an oxymoron.
Best regards,
Tim Shaw

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