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Incompetent idiots running Pinkun website

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On 09/03/2020 at 19:32, PurpleCanary said:

I hesitate - grammar and all that - but...I think this is slightly wrong. Sorry!  Norwich is not an adjectival noun as far as I know.  'The poor' or 'the deprived', where an adjective has become a noun to describe a type or a class,  count as adjectival nouns. 'Norwich' is just a place-name noun.

You are right that there shouldn't be an apostrophe in 'Canaries boss Daniel Farke' but that is because it is has come into ordinary speech, especially in sports writing as a kind of shorthand. It is telegram journalese. You wouldn't in ordinary life in a conversation string five nouns together without a break and talk about 'Norwich City manager Daniel Farke'.

If it was written out 'properly' it would be 'the Norwich City manager, Daniel Farke, said etc etc' and if that was properly shortened it would become '...Norwich City's manager, Daniel Farke, said etc', with an apostrophe.

You are right about the headache and Leitner examples. I will stop before I get on to my hobby horse, of invariably misused words and phrases, such as...🤓

This will be ultra-nerdy but I should come to the defence of Archant's subs, if there are still any, because on reflection there probably should be an apostophe in Canaries' boss Daniel Farke...

The confusion arises because both Canary and Canaries are used as synonyms for Norwich City and/or its fans, whereas other nicknames, The Trotters, for example, can only be used in the plural. You would never say Trotter boss Daniel Farke... or Spur boss Daniel Farke...

With Norwich you can say Canary boss Daniel Farke, with no place for an apostrophe, but if you amplified that out from sports telegramese to real language you would not/could not say: Daniel Farke, the manager of the Canary.

So it would have to be pluralised to Daniel Farke, the manager of the Canaries, and then if you telegramised that it should be Canaries' manager Daniel Farke. The apostrophe stands for the missing possessive 'of'.

 

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26 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

This will be ultra-nerdy but I should come to the defence of Archant's subs, if there are still any, because on reflection there probably should be an apostophe in Canaries' boss Daniel Farke...

The confusion arises because both Canary and Canaries are used as synonyms for Norwich City and/or its fans, whereas other nicknames, The Trotters, for example, can only be used in the plural. You would never say Trotter boss Daniel Farke... or Spur boss Daniel Farke...

With Norwich you can say Canary boss Daniel Farke, with no place for an apostrophe, but if you amplified that out from sports telegramese to real language you would not/could not say: Daniel Farke, the manager of the Canary.

So it would have to be pluralised to Daniel Farke, the manager of the Canaries, and then if you telegramised that it should be Canaries' manager Daniel Farke. The apostrophe stands for the missing possessive 'of'.

 

Would be such a relief if it improved.

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