For JP, like.

[Snee]

I'm still right

[JPaul]

I think your

however going without seems ok today with words ending with an "s"

is a bit misleading.

As I understand it you wouldn't add a second "s" after the apostrophe. You suggestion seems to be that it's optional.

Always happy to be learning tho' if I'm wrong in that one.

[Snee]

Rodding is annoying, like.

The way I was taught, you ALWAYS add the genitive "s" with singular nouns, even with singulars already ending with one :justincaseyouaren'trodding:

And the not adding an "s" is ok, now, but it wasn't always.

Modern correct form Cassius's book

[JPaul]

Never knew that, as far as I was aware you never added an "s" after an apostrophe, if there was one before it.

If nothing else it just looks stupid.


The Lioness's cubs were hungry.

Jeeves's new employer wasn't a patch on Mr Wooster.


Maybe it's just me but.

Thanks for that, like I said always learning. To be honest I was struggling to come up with a lot of common examples. Maybe that's why it's never occurred before, the bulk of instances would be plurals methinks.

[Snee]

It's to do with pronunciation, as I said. Today at least.

If you'd pronounce it as the [lioness] cubs, then go with lioness', I guess.

When I saw something you said about genitives in an old thread someone bumped the other day, I started to wonder if my teachers had been wrong.

So I did some research, and it would appear that both forms are ok now, tho' mine is the older way of doing it Which prompted this thread when you said I was rodding, this morning.

In middle english, or something, it would have been spelled the lionesses cubs, as far as I can understand it.

[JPaul]

You linguists with your archaic ways.

I suppose that would make sense tho'. People teaching English in a foreign place would be more likely to be traditional about it. Whereas people living in an English speaking country (see America as a for example) would be more likely to change with the times. Not consciously like, just cause of it happening.

I'm talking English teachers here btw. Not Professors and brains and stuff.

I have no justification for the above, none whatsoever. Just thinking out loud really.

[Snee]

Two of them were orginally britons, and at least one was a professor

In all fairness, tho', I got the impression that it had been quite a while since they'd spent much time in the UK. and one of them had a decidedly old-fashioned outlook on most things. None of them was young.

You may be right-ish anyways, I imagine adhering strictly to (older) traditional ideas about grammar, where the rules are clearer and thus more easily defined, probably made it easier to teach to foreigners and thus the easiest option (consciously or unconciously).


EDit: pity none of them ever gave me an easy set of rules on how to handle compound nouns