• vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 day ago

    “Could of” and similar phonetic replacements making no sense whatsoever irritate me more.

    Here at least the logic is arbitrary, “Anna’s apartment” and “school’s leadership” vs “Anna’s waiting” and “school’s empty”, but “its tail” vs “it’s cold”.

    OK, I’m not a native speaker as it may be clear.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      Fwiw, the logic is, “its” isn’t quite the equivalent of “Anna’s” or “school’s.”

      Rather it’s the equivalent of “his,” “hers,” and “theirs.” Also “mine” but that’s just irregular af. In other words, possessive pronouns don’t take an apostrophe while possessive nouns do.

      It’s not a LOT of logic, a pretty shaky ladder, but there it is. 0

      (Oh, and for both nouns and pronouns, position in the sentence makes a difference whether to use a contraction at all, or go with the separate “is.” But that’s a horse of a different color!)

    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      The one that kills me is the positive use of “anymore,” which I’ve come to learn is colloquial to Northern Ireland and the midwest US, but good lord it just doesn’t sound right when people say stuff like “everybody’s cool anymore” instead of “everybody’s cool now.” For some reason I felt like it was becoming more common but now I’m thinking it might just be my exposure to midwest.social.