I need grammar help, please

[chrisde]

I know that my English is good enough to be understood - but there are two cases that I usually try to avoid, because I am not sure about their implications and how British English speakers understand them.

The first puzzle is the apostrophe - "Angie's arm", "Britta's Bar", "Chris' cryptic conundrum" work fine to describe ownership or source. Now the possessive "its", "hers", "his" don't use the apostrophe and that might just be because writing "he's" instead of "his" looks wrong and would probably be pronounced differently or be understood as "he is". And that is the other side of the coin:

I always hesitate to use "he's" or "that's" or "it's" instead of "she is", "that has" or "it is" because I read the apostrophe as an indication of possession and at that point I just spell it out and use "it is" instead of "it's".

I understand that the apostrophe will serve as a short form of "is" or "has" as well as indicating who owns what, but how does it come across to not use it? Does it sound silly? Obnoxious? Old? Strange? Alien? I may be all of the above.


My second question revolves around a simple rule that my English teacher ingrained into me and I always doubted: "No would in an if clause!". If you knew my English teacher, whos (whose?, who's?) name meant "failure" if translated (Hello Mister Scheiter), would you agree? Or would you object to that statement if asked? Is there such a rule anywhere? If not, what would he have meant?

Thanks for your time =)

Chris

[jimthecarper]

I think your on the wrong forum.
You are confusing vapers with teachers.

[Jen]

Hi Chris

1. Writing it out is considered more formal.
2. UK EN does not have 'would' in a conditional, however it is (or 'it's'?? ) becoming more prevalent (almost ubiquitous) in US EN. I wouldn't really feel comfortable using it, but others might.

Jim - I'm a linguist and a vaper

[OneDay]

Chris your English is a lot better than many native English speakers! Many English people do not understand the use of the apostrophe these days - grammar is not taught in schools to the level it used to be. Personally I often use he's, that's etc rather than the more formal he is, that is etc.
As to the second question, I have absolutely no idea! However - there's a common phrase in English "if you would be so kind", used in a sentence like "pass me the salt if you would be so kind". I guess it's a long-winded way of saying please

[chrisde]

Jul 5, 2013 11:29:06 GMT jimthecarper said:

I think your on the wrong forum.
You are confusing vapers with teachers.

Yes, maybe I am in the wrong forum, but I am in the off topic area =)
*hug*

Jen Thanks a lot. Looks like I need to dig a bit deeper into the language differences between US and UK.

[Jen]

This might help Chris.

I'm a DE>EN translator, I get where you're coming from

[OneDay]

Jul 5, 2013 11:39:59 GMT chrisde said:

Jen Thanks a lot. Looks like I need to dig a bit deeper into the language differences between US and UK.

The differences can be huge, and diverging ever more quickly. I read somewhere that if it wasn't for TV and movies Brits, Americans and Australians would hardly understand each other by now. An American would leave their apartment, take the elevator down to the sidewalk, step into their car and head for the freeway. A Brit would leave their flat, take the lift down to the pavement, step in their car and head for the motorway.
My kids (well, 20-somethings) were brought up on Sesame Street and MTV. They use closets and go to the movies where as we still use cupboards and visit the cinema!

[jimthecarper]

i bedeutete nichts für ungut, es ist meine form des humors

[chrisde]

Ah yes, that helped, thanks.
It's different in German, where the apostrophe is virtually unused unless someone imports it from the US of A - and mostly wrong, too, using the apostrophe to indicate a plural. That really hurts.

[DiscoDes]

As we now live in a "Global Village", languages are evolving very quickly and "cross contamination" between cultures is more prevalent because of the internet & (global) television.

This effects the language that children pick up from a very early age and then naturally go on to repeat, thus the "common language" evolves and this evolution is gathering pace!

It reminds me of the film Blade Runner with people in the near future speaking pidgin, a mixture of Chinese and other languages.

[Jen]

There's plenty of apostrophe abuse here too! I've met many foreigners who have a better grasp of English grammar than the natives; it's depressing, really. Mind you, worse things happen at sea

[lynwlt]

forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=148123-+**//-

There has been some discussion there...

The consensus seems to be that 'would' is used in order to be more polite.

Languages are so fascinating.
I cite as an example how very polite I found Norwegians and yet they have no word for 'please'.

I believe there was a suggestion fairly recently that we abolish the apostrophe.....

I think you should relax a little about using them (apostrophes) as contractions, in conversation at least.

You had no problem using '' Thanks a lot'' which is perfectly acceptable but not grammatically correct....

[chrisde]

Jul 5, 2013 11:51:12 GMT OneDay said:

Jul 5, 2013 11:39:59 GMT chrisde said:

Jen Thanks a lot. Looks like I need to dig a bit deeper into the language differences between US and UK.

The differences can be huge, and diverging ever more quickly. I read somewhere that if it wasn't for TV and movies Brits, Americans and Australians would hardly understand each other by now. An American would leave their apartment, take the elevator down to the sidewalk, step into their car and head for the freeway. A Brit would leave their flat, take the lift down to the pavement, step in their car and head for the motorway.
My kids (well, 20-somethings) were brought up on Sesame Street and MTV. They use closets and go to the movies where as we still use cupboards and visit the cinema!

Ah, the old question: Why do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?
From the outside the differences between written UK and US English don't appear to be too huge. Sure, some words are different, but usually still mutually understandable.
My difficulty lies more in understanding spoken language. I was quite embarrassed when I was in Scotland and I simply couldn't understand that old man trying to tell me his war stories and I needed another local to translate for me. I was lucky, though, because the old soldier didn't recognize the license plate on my motorcycle and my translator didn't tell him =)

[chrisde]

Jul 5, 2013 12:24:19 GMT lynwlt said:

forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=148123-+**//-

There has been some discussion there...

The consensus seems to be that 'would' is used in order to be more polite.

Languages are so fascinating.
I cite as an example how very polite I found Norwegians and yet they have no word for 'please'.

I believe there was a suggestion fairly recently that we abolish the apostrophe.....

I think you should relax a little about using them (apostrophes) as contractions, in conversation at least.

You had no problem using '' Thanks a lot'' which is perfectly acceptable but not grammatically correct....

I think of "Thanks a lot" as "A lot of thanks to you" - but it might be just wrong. Thank you for letting me know =)
And yes, languages are indeed fascinating!

[lynwlt]

Chris,

If 'thanks' in that context is a noun it makes little sense grammatically.

As a colloquialism it is fine.

I guess we are either literal in our translations or we interpret language.
I think you are doing a great job of both...