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Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of but's"). However others prefer to avoid this method (which can lead to confusion with the possessive -'s ), and write 1990s , buts ; this is the style recommended by ...
English nouns are not marked for case as they are in some languages, but they have possessive forms, through the addition of -'s (as in John's, children's) or just an apostrophe (with no change in pronunciation) in the case of -[e]s plurals (the dogs' owners) and sometimes other words ending with -s (Jesus' love). More generally the ending can ...
insertion of epenthetic /e/ in inherited and commonly-used learned and semi-learned words, which then drop the following /s/ after the medieval period: Latin stēlla, *stēla > Old French esteile > modern étoile 'star', studium > Old French estude > modern étude 'study', schola > OF escole > modern école 'school'
The spelling es remained, but in many words the letter e no longer represented a sound. In those words, printers often copied the French practice of substituting an apostrophe for the letter e. In later use, ' s was used for all nouns where the /s/ sound was used for the possessive form, and when adding ' s to a word like love the e was
Unlike English and French, such elisions are not accepted as part of standard orthography but are used to create a more "oral style" in writing. The apostrophe is also used to mark the genitive for words that end in an -s sound: words ending in -s, -x, and -z, some speakers also including words ending in the sound . As Norwegian does not form ...
e.g. das Haus, der Kosmos, des Bundes, das Pils (however: im Hauſe, die Häuſer, das Pilſener) at the end of prefixes, as a connecting s and in compounds at the end of the first part-word, even if the following part-word begins with a long ſ: e.g. Liebesbrief, Arbeitsamt, Donnerstag, Unterſuchungsergebnis, Haustür, Dispoſition ...
Certain words, like piñata, jalapeño and quinceañera, are usually kept intact. In many instances the ñ is replaced with the plain letter n. In words of German origin (e.g. doppelgänger), the letters with umlauts ä, ö, ü may be written ae, oe, ue. [14] This could be seen in many newspapers during World War II, which printed Fuehrer for ...
When the suffix is added to a word ending in the letter y, the y before the suffix is replaced with the letter i, as in happily (from happy). This does not always apply in the case of monosyllabic words; for example, shy becomes shyly (but dry can become dryly or drily, and gay becomes gaily).