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Friday: booster eligibility, Fancy Friday
Dec. 10th, 2021 11:00 pmI tried to schedule son for a booster last night after the eligibility change, but CVS had not yet updated logic. I slept, and tried again today, and was confronted with the usual Everyone Else Beat Me To It Problem. I wound up finding a place where we would be and where a booster would be available for him that is not ideal, but is workable. Fingers crossed.
Fancy Friday has gotten longer lately, and continues to be highly enjoyable. I had a question about the possessive formation for nouns and phrases (the man’s sister, or the King of England’s PR problems which of course are not England’s problems, but the King’s problems, but that actually wasn’t my question at all) using and apostrophe s. I’ve been doing a lot of Duolingo for a few years now, and several languages, and seeing a lot of “of the” type formations of the possessive (de auto van mijn opa, type of thing, or el carro de mi abuelo, or la voiture de mon grand-pere). Of course we can also say that in English: The car of my father is legit, just sounds awkwardly formal, so if we’re going all that way, we would generally go further and say, the car that belongs to my father, or the car that my father is using, or the car that my father rented on vacation or whatever. We would do that only if possession was complicated or there was some aspect of the possession we wanted to draw attention to for the purposes of that communication. Also, my daughter is doing conjunction junction so I’m thinking about subordinate phrases and so forth.
But never mind that now! I just was like, what’s up with the ‘s formation thing anyway? Where did that come from? Consensus was, Germanic Languages, but also, others, like me, were accustomed to seeing von type formations (das auto von meinem Vader) HOWEVER that degenerated quickly, and we started discussing what it might or might not be in Latin, and whether that might or might not be covered by the extremely abbreviated Duolingo Latin course.
Eventually, we moved on to other topics, after concluding, yes, Germanic languages but not sure what exactly was current in those languages. Which is true, but further poking around at Dutch grammar revealed that while the Duolingo Dutch course appears _NOT_ to include the possessive formation using the s such as opa’s auto — but mind you, that apostrophe is only there if it ends in a vowel, and even then, there are exceptions! https://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Pronouns.po06
I have not done as much of the German course as I have the Dutch course (or the Latin course, which doesn’t count, because there just is not much there), but I think that it, too, does not cover noun possessive formation with the s, and honestly, given what Germans say to each other about the possessive s formation and apostrophes, I think I now have a pretty fucking clear idea about the energy underlying the ongoing conflict between Germans and Dutch people. Sure, sure, WW2 and Nazis, but honestly, I think it is actually all about apostrophes these days.
Also, the next time you run into someone who makes fun of “Peter His Book” type things in historical novels or actual history, remind them of the extensive back and forth with Dutch in that time frame — and the fact that that is an actual grammatical thing in Dutch.
Fancy Friday has gotten longer lately, and continues to be highly enjoyable. I had a question about the possessive formation for nouns and phrases (the man’s sister, or the King of England’s PR problems which of course are not England’s problems, but the King’s problems, but that actually wasn’t my question at all) using and apostrophe s. I’ve been doing a lot of Duolingo for a few years now, and several languages, and seeing a lot of “of the” type formations of the possessive (de auto van mijn opa, type of thing, or el carro de mi abuelo, or la voiture de mon grand-pere). Of course we can also say that in English: The car of my father is legit, just sounds awkwardly formal, so if we’re going all that way, we would generally go further and say, the car that belongs to my father, or the car that my father is using, or the car that my father rented on vacation or whatever. We would do that only if possession was complicated or there was some aspect of the possession we wanted to draw attention to for the purposes of that communication. Also, my daughter is doing conjunction junction so I’m thinking about subordinate phrases and so forth.
But never mind that now! I just was like, what’s up with the ‘s formation thing anyway? Where did that come from? Consensus was, Germanic Languages, but also, others, like me, were accustomed to seeing von type formations (das auto von meinem Vader) HOWEVER that degenerated quickly, and we started discussing what it might or might not be in Latin, and whether that might or might not be covered by the extremely abbreviated Duolingo Latin course.
Eventually, we moved on to other topics, after concluding, yes, Germanic languages but not sure what exactly was current in those languages. Which is true, but further poking around at Dutch grammar revealed that while the Duolingo Dutch course appears _NOT_ to include the possessive formation using the s such as opa’s auto — but mind you, that apostrophe is only there if it ends in a vowel, and even then, there are exceptions! https://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Pronouns.po06
I have not done as much of the German course as I have the Dutch course (or the Latin course, which doesn’t count, because there just is not much there), but I think that it, too, does not cover noun possessive formation with the s, and honestly, given what Germans say to each other about the possessive s formation and apostrophes, I think I now have a pretty fucking clear idea about the energy underlying the ongoing conflict between Germans and Dutch people. Sure, sure, WW2 and Nazis, but honestly, I think it is actually all about apostrophes these days.
Also, the next time you run into someone who makes fun of “Peter His Book” type things in historical novels or actual history, remind them of the extensive back and forth with Dutch in that time frame — and the fact that that is an actual grammatical thing in Dutch.