How the hell would you make the surname Pertuis (pronounced Pertwee) plural? Pertuiss, Pertuises, Pertuis’s... all seem wrong. Better just to write ‘the Pertuis family’?
“pertuises”. same as “joneses”. would be pronounced “pertwees”.
but yes, “the pertuis family” is a far more elegant solution.
Pertuis’s
Grrrr, aargh, did the six billion grammar threads on old-ILX teach you NOTHING?!?!
Grrrr, I hate people who feebly ‘grrrr’. I know fine well how it’s done! I included the apostrophe example because that’s how it had been written—wrongly!—by the author.
ANYWAY, it seems to me now that if ‘Pertuis family’ weren’t possible, it would have to be ‘Pertuis’ (i.e. no change from the singular). ‘Pertuises’ isn’t the same as ‘Joneses’, because in ‘Joneses’ the ‘e’ is actually doing something.
People who can’t take a joke, classic or dud?
aaargh!
People who say, “People who can’t take a joke.”
Pertices. Like vertices. Problem solved!
People who back off a non-joke by pretending it was a joke when they’re called on it.
Pertuii
GRAMMAR FRIENDS == SUPER FRIENDS
Chassis.
Bloody hell, folks, leave it out, I was making with teh funnies. Craply and ineffectively as it turns out, but, fuck it, call me a fucking dud if you like.
one could say that you’re being pertuis as fuck
‘Pertuises’ isn’t the same as ‘Joneses’, because in ‘Joneses’ the ‘e’ is actually doing something.
eh? this might come as a surprise, but the relationship between orthography and pronunciation isn’t absolute. nor, in fact, does it make any sense at all. i mean, just look at the way “pertwee” is spelt here anyway.
either way: you’re wrong, and your thread’s turned into a car crash anyway ;)
nb subs: pls remove one of the “anyways” from that post. thx.
Chassises.
there are no “anyways” in that post to remove.
“anyway”s
dude. it’s someone’s name. the pertuises in question might disagree with me here, but i think you, as the writer, owe it to your reader to ensure that, with this non-lexical item, the plural is clearly indicated. “chassis” is a stupid piece of irregular nonsense but most readers of english will recognise it as such and use context to decide number. personally, i’m not sure i’d even have known to pronounce “pertuis” as “pertwee” until you’d said; either way, there’s no fucking way i’d recognise “pertuis” as a plural form, just as i wouldn’t recognise “adams” as a plural form (but would “adamses”) ... or any of the other thousands of surnames ending in “s”.
for no reason i can see, you’re plucking obscure grammatical exceptions out of thin air (“ooh, ‘chassis’ doesn’t change in the plural ... right, i bet this doesn’t either”) and trying to apply them to someone’s surname. this is daft.
also: the pronunciation of “chassis” doesn’t change. the pronunciation of “pertuises” does (“pertwee” v “pertwees”).
ultimately, nobody’s going to be able to make a definitive call on this except the pertuis family themselves; like i say, their name isn’t a lexical item so it’s pointless trying to apply rules of grammar to it. however, i’m making a sensible case based on several years of academic study of the english language; basic concepts of readability; and the fact i do this kind of shit for a living every day. you’re arguing with ailsa and saying “chassis” and “chassises” a lot. i know who i’d trust ;p
xpost: stet, a) don’t be a gigantic chopping-action chop; b) why aren’t you in the pub? i thought i was coming out to meet you in half an hour?
i mean, i’m sitting here tanking sloe gin, trying to catch up!
They’ve gone off for big meal, so I have come home to get changed and wrap present. L coming over here shortly.
o! will call.
(are you going to party that I was meant to be going to but am ridonkulously skint and tired and partied out? Say hello to relevant people if you are)
Yeah, but the name is French, obviously, as was ‘chassis’ originally, and that is how the French do it! That is why ‘chassis’ is not ‘chassises’ (not the only reason, actually: see below). The French forms are retained because there is no other, sensible, option.
You would recognise that ‘Adams’ (or if you like ‘Adames’) was the plural of ‘Adam’ rather than a singular ‘Adams’ because it would be followed by, e.g., ‘are’ rather than ‘is’.
Also, there are no instances in English (I say this hoping to be proved wrong on this, by means of jokes if necessary) where an ‘e’ is introduced in the plural form where that ‘e’ is not pronounced.
I think I would want to make it Pertuix, actually, but there is no real correct grammatical reason for this, I just like it because it looks suitably wanky.
Okay, apart from words ending in ‘f’.
xpost. Yes, Pertuix is the prettiest.
And ‘o’!
Yeah, but the name is French, obviously, as was ‘chassis’ originally, and that is how the French do it!
mais nous ne sommes pas francais, donc ... meh :)
The French forms are retained because there is no other, sensible, option.
yes. english orthography is noted for “sense”, isn’t it?
You would recognise that ‘Adams’ (or if you like ‘Adames’) was the plural of ‘Adam’ rather than a singular ‘Adams’ because it would be followed by, e.g., ‘are’ rather than ‘is’.
eh? i’m talking about the surname “adams”, not “the adams” as a plural of “the family whose surname is adams”. but you’re obviously determined to plough this singular furrow, and to be quite brutally frank i couldn’t give less of a fuck as there’s a whole city’s worth of beer out there for me to drink (just as soon as mrs fiendish is ready, chiz).
ailsa: not sure. if i do, i will, but i’ve no idea what form the night is going to take :/
oh fuck. i meant “the family whose surname is adam”. i’m approaching too-drunk-to-argue-about-grammar territory fast.
Fair dos. Fair does? (ha!) I am being pressured by text message to party, but I am knackered and have too many other drinking commitments from now until the end of time. Have fun!
xpost, ha, right, that’ll be the day that you’re too drunk to argue about grammar...
heh. there’s arguing about grammar, and there’s arguing about grammar properly. and i find gin tends to blur the lines between the two.
shift yr arse dude, we’re nearly there
tell mrs fiendish :(
Fair dos. Fair does? (ha!)
The COD has it as either dos or—haha—do’s.
Really? OMG!
It’s appropriate that you posted that—very lovely—picture. The reason I asked the question was that I am working on a book about Jon Pertwee and his family. (Pertwee changed the spelling presumably to avoid threads like this.)
At a Belle and Sebastian concert, the ratio of striped sweaters to non-striped sweaters is generally set at one sweater Pertwee individual.
I fall into the one pertuis/two pertuis camp, but would write la famille Pertuis to avoid confusion.
i would love pertuix to be the answer. it’s obviously pertuises though :(
i went to school with a girl whose surname was proudfoot. i can’t remember whether it was her or someone else who insisted that the plural was proudfeet, but...whoever it was should have been right.
Ugh, can someone help me with this?
How can I fix:
“My students seemed to be more impressed by my car, which my family and I were standing in front of in the photo.”
The comma doesn’t work there, I know, but then it doesn’t work without it either. I could fix the whole thing by replacing “My car” with “the car”, but then that wouldn’t indicate that it was my own vehicle.
Hmm. I just changed it to:
“My studnets seemed to be much more captivated by the object that my family and I were standing in front of: my car.”
Sigh.
Studnets=students.
Although studnet should probably be a word meaning someone who always catches “hot studs”.
The comma doesn’t work there
?
why not?
other than maybe changing it to “... my car, in front of which ... were standing”, i wouldn’t fuck with that sentence at all. what do you feel is the problem with it?
Yeah, the original sounds fine to me — only questionable part is “in front of in the photo,” which is technically correct but a little awkward with all those prepositions.
The second one is better and more direct. There is nothing much wrong, technically, with the first one, other than that it is boring and squanders the joke.
the “joke”? right, i’m really missing something here.
The joke: they are more interested in the car than us hoho.
By second one you mean “My students seemed to be much more captivated by the object that my family and I were standing by: my car.” ? I ended up going for that one. There is no “joke” to it, but I do like how it (hopefully) keeps the reader’s interest all the way through the sentence.
This is for a letter of intention for grad school, by the way. I’m trying to connect a story about my student’s interest in my car while I was teaching in China to a broader point about future geopolitical conflict between China and the US.
Yes, that one. The other one was boring. The second one’s structured as a joke even though it’s not (even supposed to be) funny.
It would produce a wry smile, I think.
if you’d been half as interested in that car as your students were you might not be in hospital now
ah, right, i see. yes, in that case the second one is better. although “object” is a bit unusual, no?. “my students seemed more interested in what my family and i were standing by: my car”?
why WERE they so interested in that car?
I don’t think they were necessarily that interested. It was just that the family were so boring.
The plural of Pertuis is not Pertuises, because that would totally confuse people as to how it was pronounced. You wouldn’t say “the Descarteses” would you?
no. i refer you to everything i said upthread about pronunciation and orthography, and then to the gesture i’m making with my extended middle finger, which sadly you can’t see. but i’m sure you get the message :)
I do hope so :)
[cutting, aggressive remark] ;)
I’m now quite sure why you’d have the “e” at all if you’re not bothered about misdirecting pronunciation. Let’s go pertuiss!
Raised middle fingers notwithstanding, I stick by what I say. Grimly, you make no logical sense. If it’s true that the relationship between orthography and pronunciation isn’t absolute, then it’s also true that the relationship is by no means arbitrary, and that changed pronunciation over the centuries has often led to changed spellings. Spelling conventions in English are often messy and sometimes contradictory, but that are still there. One of them is that in plurals of words that end in an ‘s’, we add an ‘e’ between the two ss, to ensure pronuciation of both. That’s clearly redundant in this case, since the first ‘s’ isn’t pronounced. The most elegant solution, and one used for all other French-derived words ending in a silent ‘s’ (chassis etc.), is for the plural to be unchanged.
What’s more, if you put
plurals “silent s”
into Google, you’ll come up with several hits confirming my position, and none confirming yours. For example from sparknotes.com:
Silent S
If a word ends in an unpronounced s, make it plural by ignoring it—don’t add an s, an apostrophe, or anything else.
New idea: les Pertuis.
Les Pertuises indicates that it’s only the laydeez in da house.
But if that comes at the beginning of the sentence, how do you distinguish the Pertuis family from Les Pertuis, the string-vested, absinthe-drinking, jug-band aficionado?
xpost indeed
like i keep saying: “pertuis” is a non-lexical item. it is ridiculous to attempt to apply rules of grammar to it. all we need here is a quick and simple way for eyeball kicks to show that it’s in the plural form. -es is the only logical solution. pronunciation doesn’t matter.
into Google, you’ll come up with several hits confirming my position, and none confirming yours
OH NOES THE MIGHT OF THE INTERNET IS AGAINST ME. I MUST VOTE FOR DAVID CAMERON/SAY “SHOULD OF” INSTEAD OF “SHOULD HAVE”/SPEND ALL DAY LOOKING AT BRITNEY’S VAGINA.
we need a new version of godwin’s law: “when someone says ‘ah, but google says this’, the entire internet should be deleted.” or similar.
oh well :)
The answer, as I realised by the fourth post, is ‘Pertuis’. The question is now closed except to jokes.
dude: it’s your book (is it a book? i can’t remember, and i’m fucked if i’m reading this bloody thread again) and it’s your call. until your editor gets involved, heheheh.
hey! i’ve just remembered. i have mod powers in the sandbox. don’t make me lock this thread, people. just don’t.
grimly, Madchen’s point is another tough one for your approach. “es” adds a decidedly feminine twist to an already French name, and those who know French will certainly think you are just talking about the Pertuis babes. Since you recognize that names must be taken on a case-by-case basis, I hope you’ll finally lay aside this silly grandstanding and come to your senses.
Silly old Grimly.
tell you what: next time i meet a pertuis, or even a gang of pertuises, they’re getting a pummelling.
It’s not nice to hit girls.
That’s a common misconception.
how do you know he meant ‘hit’?
GRIMLY VS THE PERTUISES
(note mädchen, in the yellow dress, looking disapproving)
I don’t care about these Petruis(es), but:
“My students seemed to be much more captivated by the object that my family and I were standing by: my car.”
That sentence is awkward as hell and I’d never write it. There are many better ways to say that. “Nothing seemed to captivate my students as much as the car we were standing in front of” or “The car we were standing in front of was more captivating to my students” or the first version you posted, or probably best of all, an entirely different construction. But that one above, no way.
i think context is all here. i’d have agreed with you, steve, until i realised the point ZS was trying to make.
Eh, I still think it’s a cringe-inducing sentence regardless of context. Like I said, I think the best way to write it would be something completely different rather than just a “remix” of the sentence, but I’d have to see the whole paragraph in order to come up with something better.
But come on, that sounds like choice D on some standardized test, the one that they throw in there just to give you something that’s easy to eliminate and that you can’t imagine anyone would ever really pick.
That sentence is awkward as hell and I’d never write it.
Hey, Steve, how would you rewrite this sentence: “I’m a fanny”?
I’d probably rewrite it as: “Kiss my ass”
but you’re a fanny
“There are three Françoises in my class”
Now, according to Fiendish, this sentence could apply equally to three girls called Françoise, or three boys called François. But anyone looking at it would automatically assume the former, not the latter. To avoid confusion, if you mean boys called François the sentence would have to be: “There are three François in my class.”
Hence Fiendish’s solution fatally fails the comprehension test, and clarity is surely at the heart of all editing decisions. Which means that Fiendish is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
Now, according to Fiendish, this sentence could apply equally to three girls called Françoise
no it wouldn’t. when did i say that? stop putting words in my mouth.
clarity, eh? how’s this: “GIVE IT A REST, YOU TEDIOUS FUCKING PRICK.”
no it wouldn’t. when did i say that? stop putting words in my mouth.
Your solution to names that end in a silent ‘s’ is to add “es” for plural. So for you, the plural of François is Françoises. And the plural of Françoise is Françoises.
clarity, eh? how’s this: “GIVE IT A REST, YOU TEDIOUS FUCKING PRICK.”
Christ. It’s a thread entitled “grammar fiends”. No need for gratuitous abuse.
Your solution to names that end in a silent ‘s’ is to add “es” for plural
no it isn’t. my solution to “pertuis” is to add -es. it’s a surname, where the pronunciation will not be obvious to many people. if you bother to read the thread, you’ll see i’ve made this point at least twice. you might disagree. i appreciate that.
and, as i keep saying: it’s a non-lexical item, therefore who’s really to say how it should behave “gramatically”? not you, and not i. we’ve made our points—some more elegantly than others. as i’ve said so many times i’m bored shitless: the only people who really could give us a definitive answer are members of the pertuis family (and i bet there’s division there too, heh).
No need for gratuitous abuse.
granted, that was a bit OTT and i apologise. but really, seriously: give it a fucking rest. eyeball kicks has made his decision, and it’s based on his own intelligent reasoning. i disagree, but i respect his professional decision. for you to still be wittering on like a schoolboy some 18 hours after he said: “please, stop it now” is really, really fucking irritating.
and that’s my final word on the matter.
:)
no, really.
:)
Back to ‘captivate’, then. I’m not convinced that something can be more or less captivating. It either captivates you or it doesn’t.
Grimly, FWIW, I would agree with you if it wasn’t a silent s. But it is.
I mean, were it pronounced pertwiss.
i like ‘the family Pertuis’
Blimey, Simon’s gone fucking mental.
I think they’re cunts
xpost
i considered trying to find a pertuis family to e-mail and ask. but, worryingly, the top hit when you google “pertuis family” is, er, me wittering on this thread. fuck.
GRIMLY VERSUS EVERYBODE:
Average lifr expectancy of the Pertuis family
(in 1975, they were attacked in the grammar pogroms. Cries of “But we’re a non-lexical item!” went unheeded)
What happened in 1976? Did Great-Granny Pertuis serve bad vichyssoise at the family reunion?
One way of avoiding making a plural of “Pertuis” is to have ONLY ONE PERTUIS. More Vichyssiose!
I don’t trust those charts. The “General Population” line seems to always follow the median of the family in question.
When the Pertuises flourish, we all flourish. As they decline, we decline.
When the Pertuis sneeze, we all catch a cold.
The Pertuis, you see,
is you and me.
The whole (offending) paragraph:
During my second month teaching English in China, I decided to show the students a picture of myself taken after my college graduation. I passed the photo around, expecting them to be interested in my mother and sister’s blonde hair, my cap and gown, and the American scenery in the background. Instead, they seemed to be much more captivated by the object that my family and I were standing in front of: my car. Soon, instead of learning words like graduation, tassel, and diploma, my students were saying Ford, driver’s license, and gas station. Although the class itself didn’t go as I had planned, I did learn something firsthand about the aspirations of China’s future.
I’m displaying the whole paragraph for context. Please feel free to evaluate, or reevaluate. And, thanks.
I think that’s fine.
captivated
or
much more interested
‘much more interested’ is a boring way of putting it though.
Is it “expressed permission” or “express permission”?
I mean, obv. the former makes sense, but is the latter some old idiomatic version of it. Actually the example is “express orders”, I don’t really know why I asked about permission.
“express permission”
express [adj.]
1 a : directly, firmly, and explicitly stated b : EXACT, PRECISE
2 a : designed for or adapted to its purpose b : of a particular sort : SPECIFIC
Ta. I don’t really know why I didn’t look in a dictionary. One meaning of express is “definitely stated, not implied”. End.
I would think it was “express permission” but I have no real idea why other than that it’s the way I pronounce it if saying it (which isn’t often), and I tend to be of the opinion that I am right about these things.
Please note that I’m in the “another think coming” camp, and invented the word Pertuix, so am possibly not to be trusted.
(xpost, or perhaps I am!)
I thought “another think coming” turned out to be right.
I think there was some controversy and the consensus was that both were acceptable (except that I disagree with consensus because “another thing coming” is completely fucking wrong and lots of people getting something wrong all the time doesn’t make it right by default)
Even if “another think coming” is technically right, it’s really wrong.
LET’S NOT, OKAY!?
OH GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(xpost, heh)
“Another thought coming” would be right but doesn’t convey the angry-mumness of “another think coming.” Tetchy verbal anger = grammar out the window.
I WILL LOCK THIS FUCKER. I MEAN IT.
Roffle. (Maybe I would like to be an ILE mod, now that I think of it.)
t/s: specifically vs. pacifically
My bugbear = formerly vs formally
A cricketing one: how can you describe a batsman playing carefully as a batsman playing ‘circumspectly’, as many commentators do? If he were playing circumspectly, he’d be looking all around as the ball was delivered, not watching it, getting out, and therefore not playing ‘carefully’ in the slightest. GRR!!!
Circumspect: attentive to the consequences of one’s behavior.
This I know because the Bible tells me so!