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Comment by david-gpu | Hacker News Reader

Which one is the most inconsistent?

    He  -> His
    It  -> Its
    She -> Her

    He  -> He  is -> He's
    It  -> It  is -> It's
    She -> She is -> She's

The only one breaking the pattern is Her, which instead should be Shes if we wanted to keep things consistent.

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All of the pronoun contractions are somewhat inconsistent with noun possessives. So "its", but "the dog's". There's no reason why you couldn't write "it's" for both "it is" and "its". You already write both "the dog's ball" and "the dog's tired", and both "it's" and "it's" are pronounced identically, which doesn't pose any difficulties in speech.

His, her, and my are a different matter, since they are all pronounced differently from he's*, she's, and I'm.

* at least in most accents, "his" uses the kit vowel, while "he's" uses the fleece vowel

Dog's/dogs are ambiguous. It's/its is not.

"Dog's" is ambiguous in itself (dog is / that belongs to the dog), but this doesn't cause problems in practice. It's exactly the same ambiguity as spelling "it's" for the possessive would give. Also, it's / its is only unambiguous in writing. In speech, they are identical, in every accent of English - and yet people understand each other perfectly fine in spoken English, so the ambiguity is not a problem in practice.

tbh I'm not quite sure if you're arguing in favor of switching to "it's" or against. I think against...?

Clearly "x is" is most consistent in that example, implying the possessive form is inconsistent.

Also clearly in a straightforward example

  John possesses -> John's
  The dog possesses -> Dog's
  It possesses -> It's
  Xe possesses -> Xe's

is equally as consistent as "x is", which is more consistent than "Its".

(yes I'm aware there's a proper noun vs pronoun change in there, but I'm not sure that's an argument for "special noun cases are good". they undeniably exist, but should we encourage them?)

Actually if we’re keeping with the pattern it would be Shis

Good catch! Thank you.

Or shits

Does this happen to be the one billionth HN comment?

Believe or not, "it's" as a possessive form came before "its."

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-tangled-history-...

She->her (like everything in English) makes a lot more sense if you start in the roots of English. She was “hio” or “heo” and her was “hire”. By the 13th century, the pronunciations of he and heo had converged and become synonyms so “she” was introduced.

She shares a letter with seo, which was the root of both he and heo.

Simple pattern matching really can’t work in English - the roots are way too messy. And it’s absolutely amazing that people can become reasonably fluent if they only start learning as adults.

> The only one breaking the pattern is Her, which instead should be Shes if we wanted to keep things consistent.

It should be "She > Shis" if we want to keep it consistent with "He > His" and not with "It > Its".

I have yet to encounter a case where words need an apostrophe to disambiguate. It’s just an unnecessary exception. Writing is about communication and if everyone knows what you mean without the apostrophe then it adds no value.

Same thing with book authors who have a good idea that can be expressed in 50 pages but for some reason publishers want 180+, so you end up with 130 pages of fluff, wasting everyone’s time.

> It’s just an unnecessary exception.

Had you written this “it’s just an unnecessary exception” you would be talking about a “just an unnecessary exception” that belongs to it. That’s not clear in the slightest. Apostrophes exist for clarity and precision.

I think you meant to criticize “its just an unnecessary exception” and were autocorrected.

Reading it without an apostrophe it looks unusual but the meaning is still very clear.

Further, there are many words like “don’t” and “doesn’t” and can’t” where the apostrophe doesn’t even provide any disambiguating value.

There is "wont" and "cant" but theyre rather rare nowadays. Probably others too, but Im (...im?) not able to remember any easily.

The closest I can think of thats maybe confusing is plurals vs possessive... but thats usually pretty clear from context, and when both are combined its often handled specially and thats weird but not usually confusing - English often has other in-sentence (and in-context) markers for plurality. You can of course construct ambiguous sentences, but thats true of many things that are accepted as "legal English".

It would be a shame to lose y'all'd've though.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wont

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cant

No, I’m just bad at spelling poorly. What’s wrong with following the rules of a language? If I don’t use Rust properly, it won’t compile. Why make exceptions for human language?

Human languages have less "rules" and more "patterns that improve communication", and they constantly change. And even languages with like legitimate rules-bodies overseeing it still see variation in normal use.

Prescriptivism is an option of course, but it's inherently futile to some degree. Unleſſ you intend to maintain thiſ for all time, and even then your choice of what to canonicalize iſ pretty arbitrary outside of conlangſ (ſo maybe you have a chance with Eſperanto)

zatsasliperislope

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