[Ads-l] Dropped plurals

[Jonathan Lighter]

This has been going on for decades - if not longer. I had a number of
students in the '70s who would write "dentist" and so forth as plurals.

I can remember one who temporarily resisted correction, because "There
isn't any S!"

JL





On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Katherine W. Stewart <
katherine.whitworth at gmail.com> wrote:

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



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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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