Paris Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 Could anyone remind me why the French spell this little word as "Le pin's"? About a year ago I read an explanation which seemed perfectly logical at the time. I thought I was bound to remember, but now all I can recall is that the apostrophe is not an apostrophe! Possibly it indicated a foreign word? Not to be confused with le pin or les pins? All I could tell our elderly French teacher whothought there was a misprint in a text was that the word le pin's was correct French!Julia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob G Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 I don't know why the French do this, but they seem to have the habit ofusing apostrophe s ('s) for the plural form of certain word/namesborrowed from English. There's a shop near where we live called"Interior's".Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tourangelle Posted February 3, 2006 Share Posted February 3, 2006 Very irritating isn't it. Especially if you are trying to teach it. Our boulangerie sells cookie's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polycarpe Posted February 4, 2006 Share Posted February 4, 2006 Maybe they're borrowing directly from what they see in the UK. A greengrocer near where I lived in east London advertised "Apple's", "Banana's" and, most worryingly, "Lick's" (poirreaux). His other plurals were fine. Strange.It niggles when I see such mistakes here. I'm outraged when I see the same in English speaking countries (country's?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted February 4, 2006 Share Posted February 4, 2006 I did a bit of research and I found this:Pin's : 1989. Mot formé à partir de pin, épingle, et avec une apostrophe faussement anglaise afin de maintenirla prononciation de la consonne. La proposition a été épinglette. (Yeah, right...)athttp://monsu.desiderio.free.fr/curiosites/faux-ang.htmlwhich is quite an interesting page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paris Posted February 9, 2006 Author Share Posted February 9, 2006 Thank you Dick - that's it. I knew there was more to that use of the apostrophe than the word being English!Reply delayed as rather busy this month with wedding anniversary (mine) and family weddings...Julia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weedon Posted February 13, 2006 Share Posted February 13, 2006 Whatever you do, don't make the same mistake as I did and put an E on the end of Pin to show somebody how the name of a conifer tree changes from French to English![:$]weedon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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