Re: non-native accents

J Lewis — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:06:54 GMT

I can sum up my position by quoting one of my Italian students: "Either find out the correct pronunciation or read it as if it were an Italian word, to show that you don't know how to pronounce it. Don't invent pronunciations because you'll only miseducate people!"
Marvin is right, that you have to be realistic and people can't be expected to know how all foreign words are pronounced. The Spanish read Japanese names like Fuji with a Spanish "j". This is fine in Spain, but when they go abroad they should pose a few doubts. That's the important thing: don't be too sure of yourself!
BTW I think the British pronunciation of "Peugeot" must be totally unrecognisable to the French!

Re: putting the apostrophe to make it a possessive

J Lewis — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:41:18 GMT

Logically you should never put an apostrophe for making a plural, but in the examples "and" and "do" are quoted words and sometimes here it's felt that an apostrophe is necessary for reasons of pronunciation. I think there's no problem with "ands", but with "dos" there might be a temptation to pronounce it as "doss", so "do's" would make it clearer (although in the phrase "dos and don'ts" it's perfectly clear).
"Gins" and "apples" are perfectly normal plurals and there's no reason at all to think of putting an apostrophe.
A place where apostrophes are often used is in initials: MP = member of parliament and the plural is sometimes written MP's, but again I see no need, because the lower case "s" already tells us not to say "M.P.S.". Also decades can be written as "the 1970s"; I see no need to write "the 1970's".
Perhaps the only case is in quoting single letters: "Steel" has two e's.

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Re: non-native accents

Re: putting the apostrophe to make it a possessive