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!