Thread: Abolish the apostrophe!

Its certainly true that many teachers have never been properly educated in English grammar and so struggle to teach others. They are not alone. I worked as a journalist for a long time and so was very fluent, but it was not until I studied to become an ESL tutor that I learnt the grammar reasons behind the habits I already knew. Most people are OK at copying repeatedly until they know the common language habits, but dont know the Whys.
For example, many people have some clues about using apostrophes, but struggle to explain the reasons.
Apostrophes only came into English in the 17th century, so it was unnecessary until then. The English ruling class preferred to speak French for a long time, and the English language was for the common people.
Ron is right there are many varieties of English. I wrote an essay on Singapore English (Singlish). Singaporeans speak better English than many Australians, who speak Ozlish and mangle our grammar and pronunciation.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Deliberately written to reflect the grammar of some Asian languages. For example the word order is Object verb subject e.g. 'Shopping go I'.
Once you get used to it, its actually very efficient as you immediately know what is being discussed, then what is being done about it and finally who is doing it.
No need for apostrophes either.

But why change things and have to re learn how to read - your post was difficult and time consuming to read - enough proof that punctuation is essential in our society.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

But one that has plenty of historical precedent, although not historically for the whole world, due to poorer communications.

Some of the early examples are where Aramaic displaced most languages in the Middle East, largely being succeeded by Greek, and later Arabic and Turkish. Further west Latin displaced most other languages and became the "world language" for the Western world, only to be largely displaced by French. Further east Mandarin became dominant, and Malay further south, although South and southeastern Asia never gained a common language to the extent that occurred in Europe. Northern Asia had most local languages replaced by Russian.

In the Americas, all local languages were largely replaced by English, Spanish and Portuguese. In the British Isles, English was almost completely universal by the mid twentieth century, and the worldwide british Empire spread the language worldwide.

Today, the economic and political dominance of the USA, building on top of the language legacy of the British Empire, has meant that ability in English has become a key to personal advancement in almost every country in the world. It is possible that this may be challenged by Mandarin in the future, but I would not bet on it.

Whether the increasing dominance of English, that I have observed during my lifetime, continues, largely depends on what happens in world politics rather than anything to do with education or what governments want!

Indeed. ...There goes the boring old growth capital economy driving world culture and politics again. I know people who learned Mandarin for that very reason.

But the fact is, in Australia the imperative to learn another language is almost non-existent. I think we are greatly diminished as a people by this, in many ways beyond economics.

Innovation is driven by diversity, not homogenisation. Granted it is also driven by circumstance, including invasion, which most of your examples above are a result of. But we would be more likely to innovate and less likely to be invaded if we were a multi-lingual country, not resting on our English colonial laurels IMO.

Language = Friendship.

Originally Posted by Homestar

But why change things and have to re learn how to read - your post was difficult and time consuming to read - enough proof that punctuation is essential in our society.

Difficulty is another mother of invention.

‘Simplifying’ a language can actually make it more difficult to read - as a result apostrophes were invented. ...As Mick has inadvertently proven with his incongruous para above 🙃

That’s not to say Micks new lingo can’t be learnt and our brains would be better for it, because it would lead to new words and phrases, just as technology, the internet, text messaging and other cultural influences have.

Although in Micks world my sentence above would mean cant, rather than can’t. Which would result in an oblique deviation, rather than a false negative ...and who knows where that would lead us?! LOL 😂

My surname has an apostrophe. I'm rather attached to them. Many internet proformas do not accept the apostrophe as a valid character in a name. Nothing is more certain to infuriate members of my family.

My paragraph above is only difficult to read because we arent used to that word order. A Korean might find my paragraph easier to read than English.

Heres the opposing argument:

Opinion: Hey Tiger, apostrophes aren't that hard. So let's not get rid of them
Apostrophes are members of the English alphabet, not punctuation, and too important to lose - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

To sum up my points - it is not up to us as individuals to decide whether to keep apostrophes or not - the evolution of the language will decide that. All we can do as individuals is to either use the language as it has evolved, apostrophes and all, or reduce our ability to communicate by using a non-standard version of English (in this context "non-standard" means a version of English different to that which would be expected in the circumstances).

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

My paragraph above is only difficult to read because we arent used to that word order. A Korean might find my paragraph easier to read than English.

Heres the opposing argument:

Opinion: Hey Tiger, apostrophes aren't that hard. So let's not get rid of them
Apostrophes are members of the English alphabet, not punctuation, and too important to lose - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

So you want to make life harder for people that understand English so that other who already can't understand English have an easier time??? The mind boggles...