[Ads-l] Dropped plurals

Katherine W. Stewart katherine.whitworth at GMAIL.COM
Thu Sep 15 20:55:49 UTC 2016


Long-time listener, first-time caller. I am in Arkansas, and in the last
couple of years I have noticed the plural -s being dropped in speech from
words ending in -st ("guest" and "artist" are two that come up a lot; I
heard a plural "enthusiast" for the first time earlier today). And I get
it: Some people find -sts unpleasant to pronounce. But recently, I have
started to see this written—online, in e-mails, on signs, in text messages,
etc. The instances I've collected indicate demographic diversity.

Is this happening everywhere? Has it been going on for long? Is there any
significance in the leap (if it has been a leap) from speech to print?
(Ex., many people who take the "probly" shortcut in speech still spell the
whole word out in print.) Just curious.

Katherine W. Stewart

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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