Friday, January 30, 2009

Apostrophe apocalypse begins in Brum

Its the end of apostrophe's as we know em*. Birmingham City Council has decided to leave out apostrophes in all its new street signs after receiving numerous complaints about their use and misuse.

Deciding that the simplest answer is just to leave them out, the council has told its signwriters to include no apostrophes on its street signs. More here.

So, considering that we've started looking at attitudes to language change - prescriptive and descriptive approaches to how language changes - what do you think the opposing camps would say about this? What might a prescriptivist or a descriptivist say about this change?

Have a look here for the Kill the Apostrophe view and here for the Apostrophe Protection Society's take on it.

*Its the end of apostrophe's as we know em - this is a joke, not an extract from an A2 essay, although it could have been

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...