4 ms·
Dang, I'm surrounded by Jacqueses! (Jacuqi?) Thank you. I changed it to the Americanized form of possessive for words ending in s (pronounced or not) I think t
by DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Dang, I'm surrounded by Jacqueses! (Jacuqi?)
Thank you. I changed it to the Americanized form of possessive for words ending in s (pronounced or not) I think this could go either way, but I screwed it up no matter which choice an author might take.
- jacques_chester 14y agoWell in all fairness, outside of La Francophonie, "Jacques" is not a common name. And for English speakers it's just chock full of exciting traps. My favourite is putting 'c' and 'q' next to each other. In French that's a single sound; in English it says "new syllable, please! edit: > Jacqueses! (Jacuqi?) Jacqueses would be closest (-ii is a Latin pluralisation, Jacques comes from Jacob which is Hebrew). There's an impedance mismatch here: English stores plurality in the word, French stores it in the sentence.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoWould a good translation of La Francophonie be "the French-speaking world"?
- jacques_chester 14y agoIt'd be clearer, but much less fun to put it that way :D
- Gmo 14y agoI do think he is from Dutch origin though (Because he talked in the past about one of his experience with QNX in the Netherlands)
- jacques_chester 14y agoI was under the impression he was Belgian.
- Gmo 14y agoHa yes, also possible :)
- jacquesm 14y agoDutch is correct.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoOnly HN could get from API to the Greengrocer's Apostrophe. There is no fully agreed upon means make words ending s (x or z) into possessive - the below site gives example of Dumas' and Dumas's as valid. My general response has been if it looks ok with just an ' leave it and move on. I can open my own shop with the left over apostrophes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Nouns_ending_with_silent_s.2C_x_or_z http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Nouns_ending_with_si...
- jacques_chester 14y agoThanks, interesting reading. Still, I prefer my rendition. The problem here is the incompatibility between the rules of pronounciation -- French permits silent letters to end a word, English in general does not. In translating to English you must choose either to honour the French or the English rules of pluralisation and possession. Because I don't write many English sentences with de la, du or d', I figure that sticking to the English rule is the best move.