Parked too close to our place for comfort
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Today in NZ history- 25/06/1860 - Death of the first Māori KingThe Māori King movement came into existence in the late 1850s as an attempt to unite the tribes, prevent land sales and make laws for Māori. Pōtatau Te Wherowhero became the first Māori King in 1858, but died two years later.
- 25/06/2003 - Parliament votes for prostitution reformThe Prostitution Reform Act was passed on a tumultuous night in Parliament, with the public galleries filled with supporters from both sides.
- 26/06/1918 - Wimmera sunk by German mineThe steamer Wimmera, bound from Auckland to Sydney, struck a mine laid north of Cape Maria van Diemen in 1917 by the German raider Wolf. Twenty-six of its 151 passengers and crew were lost.
- 26/06/1987 - A.J. Hackett bungy jumps from Eiffel Tower The speed skier and bungy pioneer planned the 110-m leap meticulously. His dozen-strong team hid on the tower overnight and Hackett jumped at dawn. He described it as ‘one small step for a man, a bloody great leap for the adventure tourism industry.’
- 25/06/1860 - Death of the first Māori King
It’s a worry. Regular irritating apostrocides:
your for you’re
it’s instead of its as a possessive
its instead of it’s as a contraction
Many are calling for the death of the apostrophe, but how do we rhen deal with “the farmers’ cows” vs “the farmer’s cows”?
I blame the Yanks.
🙂
I reckon it all started with their habit of putting periods after abbreviations which real English speakers treat properly. i.e. Where the last letter of the abbreviation is also the last letter of the original word.
Whenever I read Mr. Smith or Dr. Jones or St. Andrew it acts like a verbal portcullis to my continued comprehension.
I disagree that the Yanks are to blame, (although it may be one of the very few things that they are NOT to blame for!) rather it is another one of those insidious changes that have ‘evolved’. Much as it pains me to do so I lay the blame squarely at the door of teachers, both ours and ‘theirs’ (or should that be our’s and their’s? [sorry]). Much as spelling has deteriorated over recent years because of worsening vocabs of our younger teachers, so has grammar. What is most sad is that the lowering of standards has been compounded by our media.
(By the way I am a retired career teacher and principal who (a) did his best to teach word-craft well and (b) employed plenty of young teachers who were the product of classes that didn’t.)
There’s always an irritant…
Lynne Truss’s ‘Eats, Shoots, and Leaves’ book is worth reading on the subject of grammatical irritants. Particularly on the subject of misused apostrophes.
I’m also getting pissed off by people putting the possessive apostrophe by itself at the end of a singular word that ends with ‘s’. The correct way to do it – shown above in this post – is to write Truss’s, not Truss’. However, it would be correct to write “The tomato trusses’ colour was red.” For some reason, the Dominion newspaper does it the wrong way and some ridiculous constructions result from their policy.
My current beef – I’m hearing it all the time on radio and TV – is people not understanding when you should use ‘between’ and when you should use ‘among’. It seems so obvious. I’m a stickler on this, though I do concede that there’s no real need, in terms of comprehension, to have more than one word. But the fact is, that we have separate words and should use them.
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