The most petty of niggles

[naath]

What is it with English speakers adding 's' in inappropriate places?

TESCO is neither plural (unless you are talking about the 4 stores you had to visit to get bog roll) nor possessive, although Sainbury's is.

Lego is a mass noun, and has no plural. You have lots of lego, or many lego bricks. The official site even gets quite cross about 'Legos'

There is a road I used to live near 'Northfield Avenue' even some satnavs make it 'Northfields' which it IS NOT. (I even had to check the sign; my brother's satnav managed to gass light me)

ARGH the irritation. What is it that drives people to this?

Comments

[franklanguage]

People always do this; it's a convention of speech—and it drives me crazy as well.

When I was in HS there was a Japanese hibachi steakhouse called "Oki" in a neighboring town; my friend Letitia would say, "Hey, on the weekend let's go to Oki's!" Nope, no clue.

[jack]

I feel like there's been some drift towards thinking of the name as the organisation and the possessive as the building, like "Tesco have some good ready meals so I might go down to Tesco's later".

I guess like, maybe English has too few modifiers so people keep making up new ones, like using ' to mark any added 's'...

And I sort of like that distinction even though I admit it's confusing and inconsistent when they're applied to shops with names that don't work like that

[ewx]

I think among supermarkets it's only Tesco and Mark and Spencer that routinely get the extra -s? I've not heard anyone say Aldi's, Lidl's, Ocado's, Iceland's or the Co-Op's. Or Waitrose's but the existing -s might preclude that anyway.

I think 'Northfields Avenue' must be in a database somewhere; if I ask Google for 'Northfield Avenue Cambridge' then after the (correct) map all the hits mention Northfields.

The road signs really don't have an 's' though. Example in the video at https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/kings-hedges-cambridge-motorbike-crash-13415078 for anyone doubting this.

[sfred]

This bugs me too.

It was lovely to see you yesterday!

[rochvelleth]

Aldi's actually sounds OK to me. I wonder whether it makes a difference whether the word ends in a vowel or a consonant (I'm classing Marks and Spencer as vowel-final since most dialects wouldn't pronounce the -r)... Also, Aldi is especially s-able for me because I come from an area where *lots* of things get hypocoristics in -ees/-ies (cf. even in Cambridge 'Gardies').

To try to explain the exception to my final vowel rule (Ocado), I'm going to class the 'shop final s' as being phrased in the same way as a person's house ("I'm going to Naath's" or "The party is at Naath's"), which might respond to thinking of shops as physical spaces you can visit. So Ocado doesn't get final -s treatment because you can't visit it.

(This is only for shops, I'm not trying to explain Northfields type final s this way)

[rochvelleth]

P.S. I know too many theoretical linguists... I don't think of myself as that kind of linguist but I know how to talk like them :)

[naath]

I think it is a possesive use, Sainbury's after all *is* the shop of Lord Sainsbury (in a sense); M&S is the shop of mssrs M and S I guess, although that isn't the official name; Tesco is NOT the store of Misstress Tess (a Kentwellism) though, I believe it in a portmanteau of two names but am not sure.

The Gardies comparison though... that's a shortening (the Gardenia, for those not in Cambridge, if I recall the offician sign correctly) and "cutesifying" which I guess would end with Tessies not Tesco's though.

[rochvelleth]

I would not be surprised if I know people who say something like Tessies - it's really common to hypocoristify (it's totally a word) things like that in Scouseland :)

Sainsbury's is definitely a possessive, that's true. Also, something like Selfridge's.

Actually, for M&S, I wonder how much the appearance that Marks is plural influences the Spencer(s) bit...

I might have to rewrite my vowel-final hypothesis a bit :)