Thread: St Johns Wood or St John's Wood?
View Single Post
  #136   Report Post  
Old July 1st 06, 01:32 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london,misc.transport.urban-transit
Phil Clark Phil Clark is offline
external usenet poster
  
First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Apr 2004
Posts: 55
Default St Johns Wood or St John's Wood?
On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:15:53 +0100, "John Rowland"
wrote:

Ned Carlson wrote:

What I'm wondering, is HTF did apostrophes get into the
English language, anyway? None of its ancestor/contributing
languages (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, French, Celtic) use or
used apostrophes, did they?

Modern Dutch uses apostrophes in the plural of certain (or all?) nouns
ending in a long single vowel, such as "2 taxi's" or "3 piano's".

So does English...

German uses the apostrophe for the possessive of personal nouns,
rather like english, eg Adolf's.

Reply With QuoteReply With Quote