A forum for examining the language of speech and writing.

Dr Philips' Campaign

During the recent leadership campaign in the PNP, broadcast journalists, from the green to the seasoned, referred to Dr 'Phillipsiz' challenge. When a word ends in the letter 's' pronounced as in 'sin', the possessive marker is what is referred to as a zero marker. The regular possessive marker, ie, the apostrophe followed by the letter 's' is reduced to just the apostrophe.

In speech therefore, you write Dr Phillips' campaign - and you say 'Dr Phillips campaign', not 'Dr Phillipsiz campaign'. Just think, if one cat has a ball, you would say 'the cat's ball'. If three cats have the one ball you would write and say - the cats'ball - surely not 'the catsiz ball'.

Machete

I don't know why a Jamaican news anchor would say that the man attempted to chop the police with a 'mashetty'. Please, we don't need these Americanisms in the newscast. The word is written 'machete', and pronounced 'ma-shet', with the emphasis on the second syllable, 'shet'.

For questions and comments, email: the speechcoach_ja @yahoo.com.