It could be worse. Who needs vowels?
R wh nds vwls?

In a three-block distance on a principle street in Hilo, Hawaii, a casual observer can see "Smiths Used Appliances," "Stationers'," and "Ross'" (a clothing store).

I pointed out to the Manager of "Ross'" that his store name needs another "s," and he responded by removing the apostrophe altogether, so now it's "Ross."

Who needs vowels?

Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi for starters. They are a nice addition, but not necessary.

Bob, you beat me to it! I was just going to post on this when I found your post. Just who are the folks calling themselves the Plain English Society?

PS: For those of us who don't live in the UK and don't have BBC or ITN on their TVs, you can sign up with Livestation.com and get UK news That's where I found the story.

I saw the broadcast and formed the impression that the contributors felt that it was probably OK to omit the apostrophe in place names, but that it should remain in other possessives.

I don't equate it to the removal of vowels, but I would equate it to the removal of all punctuation. Is that what they want? I suppose you could understand writing without punctuation; just like with the absence of vowels, you'd have to get used to it. But it would be hard to understand and easy to misunderstand.

To illustrate the intelligence level of local TV anchors, one station presented the story of Birmingham in a jocular fashion. The aqnchor made fun on them and said, "Grammarians are up in arms over this deletion. That's 'grammarians' 's' apostrophe."

I hope he was just reading from a script and wasn't trying to ad lib.

I'd prefer that he WAS ad-libing! It shows some wit if he deliberately and spontaneously did it wrong!

No, I'm afraid he was our local equivalent of Ted Baxter.

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No, I'm afraid he was our local equivalent of Ted Baxter.

He being...?

Ted was the epitome of the clueless TV anchor on a comedy series in the US during the 80s

Ted Baxter.

One of the US TV creations that didn't make it to the UK. On balance I feel we were not thereby disadvantaged.

The Birmingham apostrophe controversy has made it into the Chicago Tribune here. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since they are a sister city of ours.

I loved the Lynne Truss quote, and I also thought it funny how they had to "translate" British English for us (putting "high school" in parentheses after "A-level").

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"They are such sweet-looking things that play a crucial role in the English language," said Marie Clair of the Plain English Society, which campaigns for the use of simple English. "It's always worth taking the effort to understand them, instead of ignoring them."

If the apostrophe plays such a crucial role in the English language, then how come English survived without it until the 16th century? Then once we got the apostrophe, we couldn't decide what to do with it. We couldn't even settle on how to use it to mark singular possessives until the mid 18th century, and and plural possessives until the mid 19th century.

Truss and the Plain English Society are blowing this out of proportion. No one is trying to abolish the apostrophe. As I understand it, it's only place names on street signs in Birmingham that will be changed. I like Zwicky's comment: "omit needless marks!"

Yes, that was my understanding, too, goofy. Yet, many of the links on the Web seem to say that Birmingham is doing away with the apostrophe entirely. My take is that they are removing it from signs, where it is nebulous anyway whether it's a possessive or an adjective. Is it Valentine's Day or Valentines Day, for example. However, if you said you were going to borrow goofy's book, then they'd still use the apostrophe. At least that was my understanding.

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If the apostrophe plays such a crucial role in the English language, then how come English survived without it until the 16th century?

I suspect it was introduced to help clarify the language. We could so without many such aids and still understand what is being written: capital letters, commas, hyphens - all are regularly omitted from txt spk and those who use it seem able to understand what meaning is being conveyed perfectly well.

But it is easier and often less ambigious for a reader if the writer uses these various devices. I believe it is a writer's duty to try to make his or her communication as understandable as possible; it should not be the reader's task to try to infer what is meant, simply to allow a writer to be sloppy or lazy.

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Originally posted by Richard English:
One of the US TV creations that didn't make it to the UK. On balance I feel we were not thereby disadvantaged.

Wikipedia says that he was a character in the The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I can't remember anything about the show, but I'm certain I've seen it on UK TV.

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Originally posted by Richard English:
I suspect it was introduced to help clarify the language.

Probably. It was first used to replace omitted letters, which could be seen as a clarification. But it's arguable whether its use as a possessive marker has made things clearer, judging by all the confusion around it.

haven't we had this conversation before

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But it's arguable whether its use as a possessive marker has made things clearer, judging by all the confusion around it.

I have the feeling that the confusion is relatively recent - say in the past couple of generations. Most of my the people I know of around my own age seem to have no difficulty with apostrophe use.

Mind you, we have had two generations whose teaching was based on the "It doesn't matter about spelling and grammar - it's the pupils' thoughts that are important". In my schooldays the way you expressed the thoughts was as important as the thoughts themselves.

I mean that in general, from a historical perspective, there has always been confusion over how to use the apostrophe for possessives. It's not recent. In the mid 18th century, there was debate over whether the apostrophe should be used for a plural possessive. That was more than 2 generations ago.

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Variations in the use of the possessive marker continued for a long time, however; ‘As late as 1794 Washington Irving used apostrophes in only 38% of the possessives in his personal correspondence’ ( Greta D. Little, ‘The Ambivalent Apostrophe’, English Today, 8 Oct. 1986). By the mid-18c, however, the convention had extended to the possessive use of irregular noun plurals (children's, men's, and women's clothing), but the treatment of regular s-plurals posed problems. Some grammarians of the period, for example, saw no need for the mark in such phrases as the soldiers hats, because nothing was omitted; indeed, there was debate as to whether a distinct plural genitive existed in Modern English. By the middle of the 19c, however, such forms as the soldiers' hats were more or less established, but even so it appears from the evidence that there was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear-cut and known, understood, and followed by most educated people.

When I said recent I meant later than the past half-century. I realise that there was ambiguity about the use of the apostrophe a couple of hundred years ago, when its use was being agreed. But I had the feeling that, by the middle of the last century, most grammarians agreed as to the way in which it should be used and those of us who were educated around that time were in little doubt.

I don't buy it, Richard, when people lament that the "sky is falling" with the English language. Sure, language evolves, but I don't think people who were born 60 years ago are any better (or worse) with using language than those who were born 20 years ago. Cultural changes, such as the computer, mean there will be language changes. So be it.

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haven't we had this conversation before

Yes, goofy, we have discussed this before, but sometimes you just can't help it when you have such a dedicated group talking about a subject they love. Besides, I often find repeat threads focus on different aspects of the question.

There are times, Richard, when even people in your generation get a bit confused about apostrophes. I've always thought the English call it "Mothering Day" just avoid that pesky apostrophe (or not!) in "Mothers Day."

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There are times, Richard, when even people in your generation get a bit confused about apostrophes. I've always thought the English call it "Mothering Day" just avoid that pesky apostrophe (or not!) in "Mothers Day."

In fact we call it "Mothering Sunday" (it's never on any other day) and the reason has nothing to do with apostrophisation. Mothering Sunday is a very old religious festival, when people returned to their "mother church" for a service to be held on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Its development to celebrate motherhood happened later. Mother's Day (and Father's Day, Nurse's Day and all the other days) are created "festivals", mostly American and all with commercial motives.

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Sure, language evolves, but I don't think people who were born 60 years ago are any better (or worse) with using language than those who were born 20 years ago. Cultural changes, such as the computer, mean there will be language changes. So be it.

There is a difference between language change and evolution and language misuse - although I accept that it is sometimes difficult to tell which is which.

But I do not agree that people educated in England in the 1970s to the 1990s are generally as well versed in the use of English as are those who were taught before that time. As I said, English grammar as a subject was largely ignored in many schools for a whole generation.

I can't speak for US education and it may be that the situation is quite different.

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In fact we call it "Mothering Sunday"

In fact I was just kidding.

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I can't speak for US education and it may be that the situation is quite different.

And I can only speak for the education of Americans in English. I don't think that education in the U.S. has deteriorated.

The situation in English schools was actually a little worse than Richard is indicating. Like Richard, I was at school at a time when spelling, grammar and style were routinely taught. We had separate English Language and English Literature classes. We had weekly essays to write on all sorts of topics to develop a variety of writing skills and styles.

That was, for a generation at least, all thrown out so that I have younger colleagues - and keep in mind that we are all now English teachers who have had to learn about grammar again as adults in order to understand the language and teach it. The idea was that having a thought to express was more important than having the means to express it. In essence "I disagree with what you say" has the same value as "F*** you!"

Thankfully, I'm told, grammar teaching, has made something of a comeback.

The reason it is worse is that for some students there was an ill-fated experiment in primary schools to teach using a modified spelling alphabet based on the idea that they could learn the accepted spellings later. This wasn't universal and only lasted for a couple of years but those children entered secondary school believing that "know" and "no" where both spelled "no" and that there was an extra letter that looked a bit like a rounded "w" that represented double-o.
And having got there they were then put through a system that taught them no English grammar at all.

I have cousins to this day who are perfectly normal, perfectly bright people who are completely unable to spell even simple words and have difficulty in forming a coherent written sentence.

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I have cousins to this day who are perfectly normal, perfectly bright people who are completely unable to spell even simple words and have difficulty in forming a coherent written sentence.

With all due respect (there's that pesky phrase again!), Bob, I am skeptical when I hear something like this. To me, "perfectly bright people" read. When you read, a reasonably bright person will learn how to write and, to a lesser extent, how to spell. Now if they are perfectly bright but not in the least intellectually curious, that might be another thing. That is, perhaps they just sit at computer games or in front of the TV all day and never read. But I don't think I'd call people like that "perfectly bright."

Maybe I am just being persnickety.

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With all due respect (there's that pesky phrase again!), Bob, I am skeptical when I hear something like this.

Remember, both Bob and I have the dubious pleasure of assessing the work of some of these people about whom we speak. And I also talk to employers who complain about the inability of some job applicants to express themselves in writing. Standards of literacy of a whole generation are lower than they should be - and that is a regrettable fact. And I cannot believe that this wholesale reduction in standards has anything to do with an overall reduction in levels of intelligence of just one generation.

The USA is indeed fortunate that its schools didn't go through the stupid phase that many of ours did.

Perfectly bright people read if they are encouraged to read. We are talking about people who by their education from age five to age sixteen were, thanks to the educational polices when they were at school were in essence actively discouraged from reading. In primary school they were taught a spelling system that only existed in the books that were deliberately designed to teach that system (and not in ANY other texts they were ever going to encounter) and in secondary school they were steered away from reading and grammar as that would "stifle their own creativity".
People who don't read in those crucial formative years find it much harder to become interested in reading later.

Perhaps I should have said that the people I was talking about are not very good at spelling or writing.

Let me give two more examples.

When I did my training as an English teacher there were other people on the course who had been at school in this disastrous period. Those of us who had received an education in English Grammar were truly astonished at the lack of grammatical knowledge shown by those who hadn't. I am not necessarily talking about how they used English in conversation nor about any difficult or esoteric bits of grammar, I am talking about not knowing what a noun is, or a verb - and these were training as English teachers.

The other example is a comment I recall from when I started to do German classes again as an adult. In one lesson a younger student asked with complete seriousness "Why does German have all these tenses, when English doesn't?" and I don't believe for a second that she was making some subtle point about tense, aspect and voice.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

My only exposure to the phoenetic alpabet was when I learnt French in secondary school. I don't think it helped me (but then I have a good ear for mimicry) but neither did it hinder me. The fact that many French words weren't written down as one would expect to pronounce them didn't bother me at all, as I had known from the age of around 4 that many English words are exactly the same.

When I learnt Spanish, and later German, I didn't use the phoenetic alphabet for either and learnt at about the same speed.

On balance, though, I can't see that the phoenetic alphabet aids learning - although it maybe has a place in dictionaries as a pronunciation aid.

Not literacy in general, I know, but:
Americans embarrassed by poor spelling performance compared to Britons.

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Originally posted by Richard English:
On balance, though, I can't see that the phoenetic alphabet aids learning - although it maybe has a place in dictionaries as a pronunciation aid.

ɪt ˈmʌjt nɑt ejd ˈlɚnɪŋ bʌɾɪˈɾɪz ˈɑsəm

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

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The USA is indeed fortunate that its schools didn't go through the stupid phase that many of ours did.

Well, I may have been overly optimistic here. The fact is, I am not all that enthralled with our education system, even as it stands.

arnie, I enjoyed your link. It's funny that the Americans beat the Britons at spelling "definitely" and "friend." We also win with the word "spelled."

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ɪt ˈmʌjt nɑt ejd ˈlɚnɪŋ bʌɾɪˈɾɪz ˈɑsəm

Clearly you'd need to learn it - which is why I wrote "it maybe has a place in dictionaries as a pronunciation aid. It also may be that it is too complex for most to bother with and the more common transliterations used are better for the purpose.

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We also win with the word "spelled."

But you lose with the word "spelt".

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Originally posted by Richard English:

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ɪt ˈmʌjt nɑt ejd ˈlɚnɪŋ bʌɾɪˈɾɪz ˈɑsəm

Clearly you'd need to learn it - which is why I wrote "it maybe has a place in dictionaries as a pronunciation aid. It also may be that it is too complex for most to bother with and the more common transliterations used are better for the purpose.

What purpose to you mean, and what more common transliterations are you talking about? The International Phonetic Alphabet, which I used to write that in, is one phonetic alphabet, but there are other phonetic alphabets, and you have to learn whichever one you want to use.

Chinese students learn a phonetic alphabet, in fact some of them learn two - pinyin and zhùyīn fúhào - before they learn the Chinese logographic system. And of course Japanese students learn 4 different writing systems. I don't know if it's necessary for English students to learn a phonetic alphabet, but it wouldn't be too difficult.

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What purpose to you mean

To know how words are sounded in the national language of the dictionary. The IPA, I assume as I don't know it, seeks to provide a system of representing every sound in every language in the world. This comprehensive coverage would not usually be needed in a single language dictionary - or even in a basic translation dictionary.