Quizzes & Puzzles1 min ago
Hallowe'en
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.All correct, Indie, except the possessive. I think the contraction "brother's" is from what would be "brotheres", a genitive form in Anglo Saxon.
(It's always a challenge, isn't it, PP's name...).
E'en is surely a poetic or dialect form of e(v)e(ni)n(g), so it ought perhaps to be e'e'n'. But then contractions are often simplified, as in shan't: sha(ll) n(o)t. A contraction of eve would be e'e (see also Edward Woodward joke in "Cardboard" thread in Body and Soul).
OK, so why hasn't the possessive of "it" got an apostrophe?
my turn! my turn!
his and hers don't have an apostrophe in it.
And "its" follows that example. Actually its for 'of it' makes its (!) appearance in the eighteenth century as a made up word. It does not occur (therefore) in the King James bible.
and just for good measure, if a language goes from identifying gender as Anglo saxon does to one which identifies the gender of the possessor, whcih English does, then it must have gone through a phase where the words do not have any gender at all (apparently). This stage has not been identified in English.
oh and just for completeness,
the misapprehension of brother his book contracting to Brother's first made its (!) appearance in the eighteenth century
so why didnt they immediately object in the C18, "hold it, that can't be true, because sister's book does not come from sister his book.
actually any girl with a brother will know the thine and mine also family rule -(joke)