Language desk
< May 6	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 8 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 7

Request for comment: ITS

Unlike French, there's no single committee which sets the global standard for English.
English (and French, for that matter) is ultimately malleable, as the rules are periodically adjusted to match the current practice.
The plural for "it" is sometimes "its" as in "I treat all my guests equally, whether they are 'hes', 'shes', or 'its'". Cuddlyable3 (talk) 09:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a meta-plural of the cited word "it", not the ordinary plural of the ordinary pronoun "it" (see Use-mention distinction etc.). And language systems change over time, but that doesn't mean they are really very "malleable" at any given moment... AnonMoos (talk) 09:28, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My only comment so far is that I cannot see any connection between any of these statements. Was there meant to be some connection, or do you want comments on each one individually? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 09:25, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would think pluralizing it as "its", as in Cuddly's example, would be strictly for humorous reasons. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What? Like Status Quo's Greatest 'Its? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all 3 of those statements. What are the odds of that ? StuRat (talk) 18:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is this a request for comment? I don't personally see anything wrong with this, but are we deciding some vital aspect of Wikipedia's policy here? I assume the implied question in the third statement is the distinction between "its" as a plural of "it" and "they" as the third person plural pronoun. English as a language has a rather incomplete and inconsistent set of personal pronouns; for example we have three genders of third person singular, one gender of third person plural, no second person plural pronoun, etc. There must be a natural linguistic need for some of these problems, since many of the non-standard English dialects have invented second person plural pronouns (youse, yins, y'all, all'y'all). Regarding #1, there is not a single "standard" body, but there are style guides which more or less take the same role. --Jayron32 20:18, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean, there is no second person plural pronoun, Jayron? It has always been "you". The old second person singular pronoun was "thou" ("thee" in accusative), but that's become obsolete and we've borrowed the plural one for that purpose. Anyone who thinks "you" no longer applies in the plural, and they need to pluralise it to "youse" when talking to more than one person, is mistaken. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 22:37, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, what I should have said was that English does not have a distinct second person plural pronoun. Sorry for the confusion. English, of course, has the concept of talking to a group of people and refering to them in the second person. What it does not have (unlike many languages) is a distinct word in Formal English to signify the difference between second person singular and second person plural. The word "you" is used in both cases, just as "they" is used for both female and male gender (again, very unlike several other widely spoken languages). The fact that NONSTANDARD (sorry to bold this term, but you seem to have missed it the first time I wrote it) dialects seem to add a second person plural word would indicate a inherent need to "fill" that missing linguisitic space. You will note, if you had read my explanation (all the words) the first time, that I never once (not even a little bit) claimed that "youse" was a standard form, nor did I indicate that it should be a standard form, what I had said meant that nonstandard forms of English do use a distinct word for the second person plural, whereas the standard English does not. --Jayron32 03:27, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anecdote alert: I'm from Liverpool, UK, and we say 'youse' when talking to more than one person - it's a well known part of our dialect, Scouse. We once had an English teacher from London come up to teach us for a year. Apparently, after his first few days, he said to one of his fellow teachers that he was amazed that so many people were called 'Hughes' :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 05:14, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

... a name which, had he but known it, might well have been pronounced "yozzer". Dbfirs 09:07, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Don't 'but' me....." :) This joke works better with a video link... sadly not to be found.... --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

KageTora -- "Youse" also occurs in the U.S., associated with the working class dialects of certain eastern cities which are neither Southern nor New England, I think... AnonMoos (talk) 08:41, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Youse" or "yez", strongly associated with Brooklyn. As with this example:[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:59, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@BB and AnonMoos - yes, I do remember hearing it, typically from East Coast speakers (and only in movies, of course, as I have never been to the US). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:09, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my home dialect (England further north than Liverpool), we still retain "thou/thee/t'" and "ye" for singular and plural respectively, but, of course, not when talking in standard English. Dbfirs 09:13, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, when I lived in Leeds (for six years), there were some speakers who used 'thou' (usually pronounced as 'thaa') and even with an accusative form 'thee', though this was much more common the further out of town you got. Some (though not all) of the very same speakers also used 'youse' when speaking in plural, which is an interesting twist on what we are saying here, I guess. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:07, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Point 3 that claims to demonstrate a new meaning of ITS is sophistry to hoodwink one who cannot tell the difference between plural and a plurality. The single quotes around the non-words 'hes' and 'shes' give the game away. The corpus of English literature¹ ² is solid that the plural of IT is THEY or THEM. A sub-literate poster can combine all three points into a pretext to continue trashing English orthography but someone would smell a rat. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I should have guessed. This entire thread is nothing more than your standard pissing contest between you, Cuddlyable3, and every other user of the ref desks over the use of apostrophes. This is reaching the WP:DEADHORSE stage. Seriously, dude, let it drop. It isn't a productive use of your time to fix grammar errors in what amounts to casual conversation. If these usages were happening in the article space, you'd be fine. But this is not the article space, this is a bunch of people chatting. It is quite usual for people to have different idioms depending on the context in which they are communicating, most people don't speak the exact same way in every single social situation, and likewise one cannot demand the same level of rigor among people at the refdesks as one might expect in article text. Please just let the crusade drop. It's getting wearisome... --Jayron32 17:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's no reason I can't use "hes", "shes" and "its" as plurals in a humorous context. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:47, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or as the L.A. Times did in this political article:[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch translation please

Can you tell me what this Dutch says (each word) on the cover of this magazine?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 10:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can make out it says "Het Gildeboek. Tijdschrift voor kerkelijke kunst en oudheidkunde uitgegeven door het St Bernulphus gilde te Utrecht" - the dark image and gothic font make it difficult to read clearly. My rather poor beginners Dutch and Google translate indicates it means "The Guild Book. Magazine of church art and antiquities issued by St Bernulphus Guild to Utrecht" - I suspect "given" or "donated" is a better translation than "issued". Of course, I could be totally wrong, so maybe a fluent Dutch speaker will come along soon. I also reduced the size of the thumbnail so it didn't take up so much room on the page. Astronaut (talk) 11:05, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would say "The Guild Book. Magazine of church art and antiquities issued by the St Bernulphus Guild in Utrecht" - I suspect "given" or "donated" is a better translation than "issued". The word 'te' is relatively old-fashioned. I'm not sure if there is a equivalent in English. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't "uitgegeven" just "published"? --ColinFine (talk) 14:11, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. 'given' would be 'gegeven', donated would be 'gedoneerd'. 82.75.185.247 (talk) 15:31, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the translation. It came in handy for Guild of St. Bernulphus. --Doug Coldwell ^talk 18:24, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]