• lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    4 months ago

    The genitive is consistently not written with an apostrophe for pronouns, for good reason.

    Which is? You can’t just pretend there is a reason and hope people will give it a pass.

    Want the pronoun “he” to be “hi’s” as a possessive?

    But “his” isn’t “he” + “s”, neither historically nor morphologically (

    hint

    look at the vowel, it’s different

    )

    Historically, the possessive form both masculine and neuter singular was “his” in Old English and Middle English until “it’s” replaced the neuter form in late 16c. with a clear genitive 's ending. Even later (19c.), the apostrophe became less common but there is no good reason not to revive it. source

    But I guess you’re not too much into etymology or historical linguistics. Most pendents aren’t because once people look too much into it, they realize how anti-science their smoggery is and they adopt a more descriptive and non-judgmental view. Take that from a former pedant.