Postby Josquin » Sat Oct 21, 2017 8:15 pm
While I don't really feel like continuing this discussion any longer, I nevertheless feel obliged to respond to dampingwire's post.
First of all thanks for the clarification about the OED. However, it was Serpent who stated that today the spelling "whose" was merely a spelling convention as old as this spelling may be. I'd be the first to support historically correct spellings over modernizations, so your beef is with her. It took me like forever to really accept the reformed German orthography, although I even learned it at school, but that's a different story. Suffice it to say I'd put historical/etymological correctness over apparent modern "logic" any time.
Yeah, "hi's" or "he's" and "her's" would look funny, but only because you're not used to seeing them. To my mind, "who's" instead of "whose" is just as funny, but each to his own.
Also, I'm absolutely aware of when to write "it's" and "who's" and when to write "its" and "whose". I have been learning English for over 20 years now, so thank you for this little lesson which took me back to my first year of English at school. However, "it's" just seems more logical as "its", just as "who's" seems to be the logical alternative of "whose". I always have to actively remind me the pronoun is spelt "its" and not "it's", just as gsbod says.
Other than that, I'm withdrawing from this discussion. I really don't feel like answering an endless string of posts only because I got the pronunciation of "who's" wrong once. Moreover, I don't really think the question is that interesting. So, will you please excuse me? Thank you!
1 x
Oró, sé do bheatha abhaile! Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh.