What is Grammatically Incorrect about "British's..."

Because adjectives can't own things - so using the apostrophe of ownership with them makes no sense.

Like purple's, run's, the quick brown fox jump's over the lazy' dog

Hmmm I guess you can use The French and The British as collective nouns.

What's the context? I think "The Brits' stiff upper lip" works, as does "The British stiff upper lip"

Thanks. So the context would be e.g. The British's strong policy during the 19th century...

The British--as in the government/its people/etc. I looked at it similar to the American's view of this is...

However, this is apparently an egregious mistake. Multiple teachers reviewed my paper and had no problem with this; however, one did prompting a response in the form of "What in the world made you think that "British's" and "French's" was grammatically correct?"

With such sass, I must know what is wrong.

I can see how perhaps it should be the British strong policy, or the British response...however this does not sound as natural--although academic writing pays no attention to this, only rigid grammatical rules.

However, I'm not just describing the policy as British. I want to say the policy belonged to the British.

Thanks. So the context would be e.g. The British's strong policy during the 19th century...

The British--as in the government/its people/etc. I looked at it similar to the American's view of this is...

However, this is apparently an egregious mistake. Multiple teachers reviewed my paper and had no problem with this; however, one did prompting a response in the form of "What in the world made you think that "British's" and "French's" was grammatically correct?"

With such sass, I must know what is wrong.

~~~~>>>>>>>>~~~~~<<<<
What's wrong is you didn't need to use any apostrophes.
"The British's strong policy during the 19th century...."
should have been
The British strong policy during the 19th Century....."

or if you were referring to some official policy, or even some semi-official policy.>>>>>>

The British "Strong Policy" during the 19th Century.....".

The one objector is correct, British's and French's are not the way we in New York City would say it.

When you get here, we will talk more.

Joe( ask me something else)Nation


[/quote]

Britain's strong policy ....

or the British government's strong policy

Thanks for the answer.

What's that business about New York. Is that your pithy, esoteric way of making your posts interesting?

No, I invite people to come to New York all the time. It's a great city for visiting and, while you are here, we'll meet up. It's a very American thing to do.
We have some lunch, or maybe a dinner with some people I've invited, we talk about anything you are interested in and maybe plan some more get-to-gethers.
This past year there have been people from Canada, Slovakia, China, the far Western States of Oklahoma and Washington, also Oregon and New Mexico, as well as Brazil, Germany and England.

We will save you a chair.

Joe(come on, any time)Nation

Visiting New York is great.

I recommend it. I also recommend meeting Joe Nation while you're there. He's great.

Interesting and very hospitable of you. Although, this seems unorthodox for an American to invite a total stranger.

Joe: What's wrong is you didn't need to use any apostrophes.

That is apparent, Joe. The question is "Why?".

HH: Because adjectives can't own things - so using the apostrophe of ownership with them makes no sense.
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That was my first though too, HH. But some adjective forms sound better than others;

Americans' homes are generally larger than ... .
Substitute - Brazilian Italian Kenyan Russian Palestinian and they don't sound as bad as

British French Irish Spanish Dutch Polish Swedish Turkish Finnish Welsh Scottish Danish with an s'.

Yeah, I stumbled on that too - most nationality adjectives are also nouns for someone(s) of that nationality. Context helps.

I agree about the 'sound' mattering too - I have almost no grammatical knowledge, but as a native speaker you have a sense of 'what sounds right'. Not that it actually is necessarily right.

HH: Yeah, I stumbled on that too - most nationality adjectives are also nouns for someone(s) of that nationality. Context helps.
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But even in the group that are regular ( Italian /an Italian/the Italians) some sound more natural/less odd than others, whereas in the exceptions group, they all pretty much sound uniformly strange.

HH: I have almost no grammatical knowledge, but as a native speaker you have a sense of 'what sounds right'.
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That's what I've mentioned often. You know your grammar perfectly - it's your internal grammar that tells you what sounds right. You don't consciously know your grammar. This is similar in nature to knowing how to breathe or walk but not knowing how to describe the physiological processes.

In other words, language is as natural as breathing or walking/running.

You are absolutely right.
I thought Hingehead had already answered the question quite well.
Didn't you?

Sorry ebeth, but you are wrong on this one.



























We never have strong policies.

You're not a total stranger, you're just new to A2K.

If you stick around and ask more questions, maybe even answer some, you'll meet a lot of people here. We have all kinds, some crazy, some not so crazy, some smart, some really smart, some really really smart. I am in at least two of those groupings.

Joe(See you later)Nation

Joe: I thought Hingehead had already answered the question quite well.
Didn't you?
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Hinge made an excellent start but the question hasn't been answered. It's certainly not a question of grammaticality for as we have seen some adjective forms do work, better ?? than others.

I suppose McTag and Lordy will sort it all out if Contrex is willing to lend them a hand.

http://www.fedu.bu.edu.eg/

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