mon journal - par Vincent - On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Comments

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Vincent

Vincent — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:26:12 +0000

> Speaking of confusion, Vincent please don't use the ambiguous "10/01/2007"
> for dates in your blog (January? October?), instead use the unambiguous
> world standard ISO8601 format, 2007-01-10.

Sorry, I didn't think about this when localizing in english this blog ;-) Should be fixed now.

There are still some l10n issues here and there, but they're generally unfixable without hacking the blog software, while l10n is done only in my theme.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - skierpage

skierpage — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:11:04 +0000

"It's" is also an abbreviation for "it has", for example "It's been a long drive" or "It's got a big engine".

Murray Cumming, you're on a slippery slope. His, hers, its are possessive pronouns, they already imply "of x" ("hers" is an odd case). If you allow "It's engine is good", then why not allow "Hi's car is broken" and "That car is her's"? I've seen people garble those. Arguing that people can figure out error's is not reeson for to permit thems. There's no ambiguity here in the way English works, just unclear or uncaring authors.

Speaking of confusion, Vincent please don't use the ambiguous "10/01/2007" for dates in your blog (January? October?), instead use the unambiguous world standard ISO8601 format, 2007-01-10.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 22:34:25 +0000

It's a typo, not a linguistic error. There's no difference between the two in spoken language. Also, its tiny nature makes the typo difficult to spot (it's just a little dot that differentiates the two, remember).

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Murray Cumming

Murray Cumming — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:49:27 +0000

It would be simplest just to allow "It's" where "Its" is currently correctly used. There would be no problem with guessing the meaning of "It's" by looking at the context. I write "Its" correctly, but I think it's an unnecessary pedantic thing that will disappear eventually.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Vincent

Vincent — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:02:00 +0000

Frederic: nice one :-)

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Me

Me — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:37:14 +0000

I find it amusing that they speak of teaching correct English but their front page (grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/g... can't even use a simple abbreviation correctly. Did they mean to write "Dr. Charles Darling"? Is his title supposed to be "Drive"? If it's meant to be "Doctor", then they inserted an unnecessary and confusing full stop. Either they made a mistake or that site is an amateur effort.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:17:19 +0000

Not to add fuel to the fire here, but some native speakers of American English (college level) will write "could of" instead "could have," due to their phonetic similarities in casual speeh.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Frederic Peters

Frederic Peters — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:00:49 +0000

Just read this on linuxfr: « ça porte s'est fruit ».

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Robin

Robin — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:25:12 +0000

I learned English as a foreign language and always notice when someone makes this mistake, but I could never make it myself. As someone said earlier, it's probably because as a non-native learner, you normally read or write more than you speak.

What I have problems with is irregularities in spelling - read the following poem for examples:
ncf.idallen.com/english.h...

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Julian Turner

Julian Turner — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:25:53 +0000

And Rocco just demonstrated another common mistake in written english: Replacing vowels with other ones that sound the same. Compatability, vacinity, and so on, its just miserible.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Greg K Nicholson

Greg K Nicholson — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:02:19 +0000

Huygens, actually a lot of people confuse words like "being" and "been" as well - in some accents (such as in the north-east of England) the "ing" sound is often rendered as "en" when spoken.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Robin Munn

Robin Munn — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:39:48 +0000

Another example of an easily-confused set of words: "they're sure their car was over there."

:-)

As for the it's/its confusion: yes, it's partly (maybe even mostly) because of the fact that apostrophe plus S indicates the possessive for most nouns (though not most pronouns). But another contributing factor, I think, is that many people just don't read very much. They watch TV, or play video games, or watch (or play) sports for their entertainment rather than reading books, and they only read when it's necessary. Thus they don't get exposed to the written form of it's vs. its very often, and only hear the spoken form (which is absolutely identical in sound). Whereas someone who's as voracious a reader as I am would encounter the difference, in written form, thousands of times. So I never even have to think about which form is correct, because it's sunk into my subconscious by now.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - tf

tf — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:33:14 +0000

Actually, the reason why "its" and "it's" are commonly confused even by native speakers, and even those who know what the correct usage is and why, is quite simple; the 's grapheme virtually always signifies possession; "it's" is just about the only case in normal contemporary use where this is not the case, and to muddle things more, "its" happens to be a possessive form.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Roger Clark

Roger Clark — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:25:51 +0000

Rocco: I don't know where you came up with that "ancient names" hogwash, but it definitely isn't true. Grammar and punctuation in the English language -- or any language, really -- aren't dependent on "age" of any sort. It gets even more ridiculous because you specifically mention Biblical stuff.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - HE

HE — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:18:35 +0000

My native tounge is Swedish, and I don't really make the its vs. it's or the your vs. you're errors either. My gut feeling is that native english speakers make those errors more frequently than us foreigners.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Martin

Martin — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:02:23 +0000

In Swedish there is a similar phenomenon with people confusing the words "de"(they) and "dem"(them). The origin of this is that both words are pronounced "dom" in casual language. Someone who have learned swedish as a second language and therefore making the connection with for example, in the case of english being the first language, "they" and "them", are probably less likely to make the mistake.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Rocco Stanzione

Rocco Stanzione — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:56:51 +0000

It's not difficult. The most common mistakes in written English are surprisingly few, and can be conquered by simply learning what they are and how to avoid them. "Its" is possessive, and "it's" means "it is". That's all you need to know to get it right, but many (most?) people don't. My pet theory is that they can't be bothered. By and large, people who make that mistake are antagonistic toward correction. People know what they mean, so it's good enough for them to drop apostrophes in random locations in the vacinity of the S. "Its'" is not uncommon, for example, for either usage.

Some parts of the language are complicated and difficult, but it's also rare to run into them. For example, if you have a person's name ending in S, and need to make it possessive, does it get another S or doesn't it? The answer is yes, except for ancient names, except for biblical names, except for Jesus. So it's "Bridget Jones's Diary", "Achilles' heel", "Judas's kiss", and "Jesus' disciples". It doesn't turn my stomach to see someone screw that one up, but a mistake as common and as simply understood as "its" and "it's" tends to make me discount whatever is being written.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Julian Turner

Julian Turner — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:41:42 +0000

It's a common phenomenon. I've noticed that native German speakers have a lot more problems with "das" and "dass" than people who learned German as a foreign language.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Andrew Sayman

Andrew Sayman — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:33:25 +0000

It's just hard to remember because possession doesn't work the way you would expect given the most common form. They shouldn't have overloaded the apostrophe so much.

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's - Matthew East

Matthew East — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:31:31 +0000

Nicholas: you don't need a trick - you use an apostrophe where it is replacing a letter. "It's" is short for "it is".

"Foo" is absolutely right about the reason for confusing the two though. That and poor teaching in schools.