BONUS: History of the possessive apostrophe | The Apostrophe | Punctuation | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hello grammarians and historians and
linguists and friends david here along
with Jake hey and Paige hello and I want
to continue our discussion of the
history of the apostrophe in English and
what I'm having Jake draw for me right
now
is an Old English King because what's
the story of the possessive apostrophe
in English is really the story of Old
English like how did we get this like
pages and jakes how did we get that
ending up as our possessive form in
English without apostrophe s because it
didn't always use to be that way it
didn't always used to be apostrophe s oh
that's very nice jacket well I try
so that's King Aethelred so okay so when
we're talking about you know this the
possessive the possessive in English is
is very strange because it's this relic
from history of these forms left over
from Old English so here's here's this
table this vastly simplified table
English used to have these things called
case endings and this is not a very this
is like a super simplified version these
are all what are called the the strong
case endings that were strong and weak
case endings for each gender and in
English we had masculine feminine and
neuter but the important thing to
remember is that the singular form of
the neuter and the masculine was yes and
that just sounds like gobbledygook right
now I get it so let's take our king
which in Old English would have been
kidding right and so if we're gonna look
at this crown well in Old English they
would have just used the Latin Corona
so we're just going to refer to this as
a hat so if we want to talk about the
king's hat in Old English we would use
the special possessive ending the
masculine possessive ending right
because English had a million of these
endings there was one where if you were
the sub
of a sentence you would use that ending
if you were the object of a sentence you
would use that ending the norman
invasion lopped all those off along with
a bunch of english heads and now we have
a much more simplified language for
better or worse if we're talking about
the caning here we can refer to this
this guy's hat as sickening is it which
might not be the most accurate but you
know Beowulf isn't around to correct me
so if we're looking at this Kinning here
right the possessive ending is this es
if for example we had and I'm going to
draw a queen that's not going to be as
nice Queen Belinda so the the difference
between so it's okay so the Old English
word for queen was perhaps
unsurprisingly Quen and if we're going
to talk about the Queen's hat we would
use this singular strong feminine
genitive ending which is kweh nuh right
with an e say queen a hat and that's
where all of this started okay so we
have this really ludicrously complicated
system even this table is simplified
right like I've left out half of it but
ultimately what it boils down to is
securing his head say quaint ahead and
as we move through history what happens
is the French invade and they say uh the
system is very complicated let us get
rid of it and they do and it basically
leaves us with by the time we get to
Middle English the following so by the
time we get to Middle English we have
the king is hotter and we have the queen
is hata and what's happened is this old
English masculine and neuter genitive
this possessive form has just become the
norm for everything everything is now
masculinized for better for worse that's
like everything has been simplified in
that direction that's part one okay so
hold that in your head okay then
so that's meddling us and then the
printing press gets invented
now all of a sudden people are writing
texts in English all over the place but
nobody knows how to spell yet right so
we've got we've got that possessive form
and then we have what's called the his
possessive so at this point we're in
modern English right and so some some
bits of middle English and Old English
have fallen away but so for example
we're still looking at something like
the King is hat but we're also starting
to see in this one weird little period
between like the late 16th and early
17th centuries this brief fad for this
thing where people went the king his hat
and if you can imagine like a post
Elizabethan era Londoner saying this it
kind of sounds the same to my mind the
king his hat the king has had write like
like you're losing this this H is kind
of swallowed so nobody knew how to spell
because there was no way to spell right
like Samuel Johnson had not yet written
the first dictionary that's like 1720
I'm pretty sure there were no standards
not because people were dumb or anything
certainly not it's just that these
standards didn't exist like in the great
scheme of history there's stuff that we
do now you know that 400 years from now
people are going to look back it doesn't
be like both you used words to
communicate you know like we have no
idea so what starts to happen is is this
this thing this the king his hat becomes
more and more common to the point where
people just sort of understand it as a
given and it starts to get collapsed to
save space so the king his hat becomes
the Kings hat like so and it with just
this one weird fad usage which you could
even argue is like a folk etymology or
something made up doesn't matter it
happened
it's a tested in print and this is how
it was collapsed and what happened as a
result of this usage is the same thing
happened to this
the king his hat became the king's hat
and it was just as well frankly because
if you were talking about the Queen's
hat in this his possessive context you
just you'd either have to do the Queen
her hat which is fine I suppose
or the Queen his hat which doesn't make
a ton of sense and if you're wondering
how there can be just this random change
in sound in a language without anybody
orchestrating it think of a time where
you say something like I'm gonna go to
the store I'm gonna what are you really
saying there it's a contraction of I am
going to but nobody actually says I am
going to go right now they say I'm gonna
go so words are always kind of mashing
into each other if you remember from an
earlier video when Paige and I were
discussing the principle of least effort
that's what Jake is getting at is the
tongue is lazy don't feel bad but the
tongue is lazy yeah so what happened was
you know this thing became and pretty
soon everything became this way so
because of this one strange little fad
what we call the Saxon possessive this
thing the king is the quaintness
eventually just became kings and queens
like so how elegant thank you Jake Paige
does this square with how I mean this is
how apostrophes are used in English but
Jake and Paige y'all were telling me
about all the many ways that apostrophes
are used in other languages around the
world
right well I think you know a
punctuation marks are tools just like
any other tools that human beings use
they could use different ways in
different languages so in Dutch
apostrophes are used to make plurals
what four words that end in a vowel so
okay photo in Dutch is fot oh if you
want to have multiple photos well you
have to throw in an apostrophe you have
to throw in an apostrophe before the S
no good reason why that's the case
that's just how they do it
conversely Dutch does not put an
apostrophe for possession so if you
wanted to say yawns book you would just
jas Oh so it kind of retains this this
genitive it can it retains this
possessive form right
same thing with German so how do we say
how do we say yawns book young boo click
that mm-hmm okay
same thing with German German is a
little bit more conservative and that it
retains the es so gospel might mean the
book in German and if you want to say of
the book or if you want to say the books
you'd say desk bukas with that es ending
tagged on to boo oh the same one as in
as in Old English right so since English
is kind of a cousin language to German
mm-hmm you can you can see which way the
ball fell on these two languages wow
that's super cool page any insights from
Danish yeah so from my limited you know
expertise in Danish uh people who speak
Danish tend to abbreviate like all their
words like everything gets shortened all
the time
sure uh so the apostrophe is sometimes
used in a similar way to how it is here
to sort of show what's being shortened
okay so in Danish to say something like
take me with you mm-hmm
you would say Tommy mil talk me man
so then you can shorten that first word
in writing by getting rid of the G and
adding an apostrophe okay this actually
doesn't happen much it kind of has
limited use but but it's similar to how
how we use it for contractions and in
English sure and like how this
possessive was formed it's interesting
that the possessive the modern
possessive in English is just a form of
contraction yeah
sorry well folks thank you so much for
joining me on this journey through the
wacky history of the apostrophe in
English thanks for taking us yeah it was
fun anytime I remember folks you can
learn anything Dave it out hey Joe Jacob