{"id":132,"date":"2004-09-14T22:29:55","date_gmt":"2004-09-14T19:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/archives\/2004\/09\/14\/misplaced-ss"},"modified":"2005-10-21T20:51:43","modified_gmt":"2005-10-21T17:51:43","slug":"misplaced-ss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/2004\/09\/14\/misplaced-ss","title":{"rendered":"Misplaced s’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote such a pompous (I love the Finnish equivalent pompöösi<\/i>; I used it a lot last summer. On my grandpa’s birthday dinner for example… when I was discussing my aunt’s stable’s name (we were thinking what it should be called, and I said that calling it blablabla horse farm<\/b> would be too pompöösi<\/i>)) introduction to my blog that I have to write something about the things I love — I’m going to write about language. Misplaced s’s in fact. Esses, you ask?<\/p>\n

There are two advertisements on (Finnish) tv and they both annoy the gag out of me! One advertises a “Brit humour” block on a cable\/digital channel and there are these “Let’s Learn British Humour” units that play with homonymity<\/abbr> of words. One of the sentences is: “Skijumpers fly like an eagle” and there’s a picture of a fly (the animal), owned by a skijumper, and hearts and an eagle. What’s my problem? There’s only one fly but the verb is plural! I’ve come across a similar sentence when we were talking about ambiguousness and resolving it: time flies like an arrow. There everything’s in order (except that the other interpretation of the sentence doesn’t make any sense). So, in order to make the darn ad sentence to be actually funny, it should be: skijumper flies like an eagle, when the flies would be the skijumping type, though.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Now to another advertisement: “Palmolive deodorants. Protects and takes care of your skin [elaborated translation].” Eh? There’s an s after deodorants<\/b>, why are you cramming it after the verbs too?
\nWell, the ad was in Finnish (deodorantit<\/i> = plural, hoitaa<\/i> and suojaa<\/i> = singular), but you get my point.<\/p>\n

Today I also started thinking something I remember learning somewhere along my English learning “career”: even though a name ends with an s you put ‘s after it when it needs a possessive suffix. Thus: Douglas’s not Douglas’. If it was Douglas’, there would be more than one person named Dougla possessing something. But, today in Salem’s Lot, it said Jesus’ and I didn’t know Jesus is a plural (maybe he’s schizophrenic?). I’m not saying that Stephen King is the Ultimate Authority of English grammar (although he’s taught English), and I’m not saying that I know what I’m talking about, either…
\n*checks grammar*
\nAh, bugger. It’s either — or. I still think I have a point (Douglas’ vs. Douglas’s) \":mrgreen:\"<\/p>\n

Oh, the introduction is not up yet. That countdown box is taking its place at the moment. Now I have to go tape Sex and the City. It’s got David Duchovny!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote such a pompous (I love the Finnish equivalent pompöösi; I used it a lot last summer. On my grandpa’s birthday dinner for example… when I was discussing my aunt’s stable’s name (we were thinking what it should be called, and I said that calling it blablabla horse farm would be too pompöösi)) introduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}