Why apostrophes are important

[rich p]

Their was a pub called the COCKSWELL - only to have someone put INN on the end...then it got renamed sadly; this was an actual pub name in Liverpool.

Yeah, and the landlady was Miss Lucy Likes

 

[Andy in Sig]

On Teesside people refer to a a group of two or more people as "yous", e.g. yous lot over there.

Also in Liverpool, N Ireland and parts of Scotland. It's a perfectly legitimate bit of dialect and simply distinguishes between singular and plural second person. You could imagine that over time it would become something like "yus" and would even enter into standard English. It certainly wouldn't do any harm and possibly be of help in clarity of meaning.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I am sorry if anyone has taken offence at my comments about Hull, but I do live in the locality, so have an implied permission to be critical. I am also yorkshire born and bred, but I don't talk "lark thaat". I understand about dialect too, and dialect as far as I was aware is about pronunciation, not about gramatical sentence structure. eg "have you seen t'whippet" and "I've booked it on t'internet". Both are common uses of the use of t' instead of the, and not changing a whole word for an incorrect one such as "I were" instead of "I was" or "we was" instead of "we were". I hope that makes some sense?

 

[Rhythm Thief]

It's a perfectly legitimate bit of dialect and simply distinguishes between singular and plural second person.

Didn't we used to have such a distinction in English with "thou" and "you", "thou" being singular and "you" plural? Strikes me as a useful distinction.

 

[Andy in Sig]

I think that was more the formal/informal distinction as in du und Sie or tu and vous. (Du obviously has the same root as thou and indeed similar inflections on the verb: Thou beest/Du bist.) Then of course you come to realise that the west country "I be" is just a less irregular and probably older form of the verb.

 

[Andy in Sig]

I am sorry if anyone has taken offence at my comments about Hull, but I do live in the locality, so have an implied permission to be critical. I am also yorkshire born and bred, but I don't talk "lark thaat". I understand about dialect too, and dialect as far as I was aware is about pronunciation, not about gramatical sentence structure. eg "have you seen t'whippet" and "I've booked it on t'internet". Both are common uses of the use of t' instead of the, and not changing a whole word for an incorrect one such as "I were" instead of "I was" or "we was" instead of "we were". I hope that makes some sense?

I think you're mixing up accent with dialect.

Contrast northern and southern pronunciations for e.g. butter. That's a matter of accent.

But if a northern kid says "Are we goin' lekkin?" as opposed to southern "Are we going out to play?" that is a difference between the two dialects as different grammatical constructions and vocabulary are used.

 

[ComedyPilot]

It must be just me, floating along on my own little ship, making little sense of the world around me.

 

[Fnaar]

I think you're mixing up accent with dialect.

Contrast northern and southern pronunciations for e.g. butter. That's a matter of accent.

But if a northern kid says "Are we goin' lekkin?" as opposed to southern "Are we going out to play?" that is a difference between the two dialects as different grammatical constructions and vocabulary are used.

Aye, 'appen yer reet, tha knows!