Weird Punctuation Decisions

[deird_lj]

I’ve been corrected in the comments to my last post for pluralising “Mary-Sue” incorrectly.

And while part of me wants to wave my editing course in people’s faces and go “I know better than anyone! Hah!” and another part of me wants to change it so that people won’t think I am bad at punctuation, I thought it might be more interesting to make a post about it – because I’m obsessed with language, and find this stuff far too fascinating.


Yes, I did check my textbooks before posting. And they… disagreed.

Let’s look at a boring and normal name.

Mark

Original word: Mark
Possessive form: Mark’s (as in “This is Mark’s hat.”)
Plural form: well, it’d be “Marks”, right? After all, simple English plurals are made by sticking an S on the end – that’s really all that has to be done.

Which would be all well and good – if all names were names like Mark, Luke, and Katherine.


However…

Louis

This one already has enough debate over the possessive form. (Is it “Louis’s hat”, or “Louis’ hat”? No-one’s quite sure.) Add in the possibility of more than one Louis, and there’s a whole new issue.

If there are five people called Louis in one room, are they the “five Louis”, or “five Louises”, or “five Louiss”?


Buffy

If Buffy clones herself, are there “two Buffys”, or “two Buffies”?
(Jane Espenson prefers Buffies.)


Henry

Has England had “eight King Henrys”, “eight King Henries”, or “eight Kings Henry”?



My textbooks disagree. One recommends a different style for each name – “Marks”, “Louis’s”, “Buffys”, and “Kings Henry”, respectively – one says “do whatever you want, just be consistent”, and one says to use apostrophes: “three Mark’s, five Louis’s, two Buffy’s, and eight King Henry’s”.

I decided to go the apostrophe-adding route, even though I knew it would look like I was mixing it up with possessives.




So: was I right? Or wrong? Or should I have done something completely different?
Tell me in the comments!

Comments

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Well, it's somewhat of a Southern thing to call St. Louis "Lou-ee" so the song might do that. Just like how New Orleans is pronounced "N'Awlins" more locally, where as I would say New "Or-leens" and then in France the end would be "Or-lay-ahn". But the general pronunciation is to pronounce the S. The silent S is still around, but it's not the most common pronunciation across the board in America. FWIW, people who live in St. Louis pronounce the S and say they can identify a foreigner if they pronounce it in the French manner.

Listening to the song again "Meet me in St. Louis", it's funny to note that "St." is still pronounced with the hard "t" when in French it would be "San Loo-ee". So, St. Louis still being pronounced with a silent S while the hard T has been adopted is just indicative of the word being stuck in evolution for a minority.

American English tends towards a more simplistic spelling style, but there's still relics of consonants never pronounced (knives with the silent K and gnats with a silent G), where as we remove what we see as superfluous U's and turn hard S's into Z's. Then we also have words borrowed from other languages where the foreign pronunciation is adopted by some. And then there's words like "ballet" and "fillet" with the silent "t" at the end. English is such a hodge podge of different languages--Latin, French, Anglo-Saxon--that I still find the idea of basing punctuation rules on pronunciation to be problematic.

[deird1]

American English tends towards a more simplistic spelling style, but there's still relics of consonants never pronounced (knives with the silent K and gnats with a silent G) and then words borrowed from other languages where the foreign pronunciation is adopted by some.

Plus, you guys say "yuman" and "erbal" and "yumanity" rather than pronouncing the H like normal people. That weirds me out...

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I agree about "erbal" and the "h" being silent, but I don't think "human" or "humanity" have a pure "y" sound instead of the "h". The soft "h" coming out as more of a "hyu" sound, but still significantly different to me than "yu". A different part of the back of the mouth is stressed to pronounce the two sounds. It's a subtle difference, but definitely not a "y". My tongue, mouth and throat understand the difference between a soft "h" and a hard "y". :P

Do the first syllables of "human" and "you" sound the same to you when Americans say it? That's interesting.

[deird1]

Do the first syllables of "human" and "you" sound the same to you when Americans say it? That's interesting.

Not the same, exactly. But if I was writing it out phonetically, I'd have to go with "yoo-man" rather than anything else.



(Someday, I'm so going to video myself demonstrating my normal accent and my fake British and American, so that I can actually discuss accents without resorting to really weird spellings.)

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I think the soft "h" really is a "hyu" combo. You start off with the hard "ha" at the back-top of your throat and it rolls down into your tongue for the "yu" finish. Where as the "yu" just stays purely on the tongue and doesn't need any added push from the back of the throat.

And yes, I've been saying aloud "human" and "you" to feel the difference. :P

It reminds me of some German words that combine two consonant sounds in interesting ways for my American tongue.

[deird1]

*tries it out myself*

It feels like... well, like there's not a pronounced H, but that the space where the H should be is cancelling out the first bit of the Y - thus making it sound softer than a normal Y.


(Does that make sense?)

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure anymore. I'm too amused by the image of us "hu-hu-hu'ing" at our computer screens from opposite ends of the globe.


It feels like... well, like there's not a pronounced H, but that the space where the H should be is cancelling out the first bit of the Y - thus making it sound softer than a normal Y.

Wait, that does make sense. It's like you have the beginning of the H and the ending of the Y.

[deird1]

Woo! We make sense! *high-fives*