That’s why it’s important

Ratna Raman

Smsing is a new verb that shows signs of moving into a continuing future. Yet, it has managed to contract language into ugly signs. Now we can flirtatiously compliment someone with a quick message “ULk  gR8”.
Even in expanded form, “you look great” is an extremely banal compliment. Especially since greatness was once associated mostly with deeds and   had very little to do with appearance.  The fact that words such as gorgeous, beautiful, stunning, elegant, charming and handsome refuse to lend themselves easily  to  abbreviation and phonetic numerals should make us re-examine the fact that  vocabularies are being truncated  by the limited circulation of a few phrases.
Take “LOL”, for instance. Does it express an abundance of love (lots of love) or is it a response to a shared joke, (laugh out loud)? While we are looking at SMSes, ROFL comes to mind. No, this is not the simulation of  guttural animal  sounds. “ROFL” expands into “Roll on the floor laughing”.
Is this new code reductive in its dealing with human emotion? We need to give this a serious thought, because a shrinking vocabulary indicates a  poorer cultural space. It’s perhaps time for a serious assessment.
Contractions exist in the English language. Take the use of “it’s” in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. It is becomes one word by  dropping a letter and  substituting it with  an apostrophe. That’s how contractions work. Two words become a single word by dropping one or more letters from the second word. “It’s raining” is a contraction of “It is raining”.  That’s the size I need is a contraction of that is the size…. “I’ll be going” expands into “I will be going”. “She’ll meet us” expands into “she will meet us”. All these are examples of direct speech or active voice. “It’s”, “that’s”, “I’ll”, “they’ll” are used in formal writing if a conversation has to be reproduced in direct speech. They prove very useful when dialogues are required in plays and stories.
 However, the cardinal rule for possessive pronouns is that they do not take apostrophes. In writing exercises, his and hers are invariably written without apostrophes. Possessive pronouns such as its, yours, ours and theirs are written erroneously with apostrophes.
Although proper nouns and ordinary  nouns  take an apostrophe followed by an ‘s’ to indicate ownership, as in “dog’s bone”,  “Alleppey’s canals”,  “bird’s flight” and so on.  All possessive pronouns: its, his, hers, yours, ours theirs, despite ending in ‘s’ never take an apostrophe. Apostrophes must not be used in a Pavlovian manner between your and s and their and s.
Possessive pronouns work as follows:
The mango tree is native to India.  “Its” fruit is fleshy and sweet. Its pulp is used to make desserts and juices and as ampapad. There are many different varieties, but orchard owners from the North insist that “theirs” are the best.  No, say the mango growers from the South, “Ours are far better.”
Now, for the twist in the tale! Phrases such as “Shyam’s late”, “Azim’s early”, “She’s tall”, “He’s annoying” are grammatically correct as rules of contraction apply here. The litmus test  is to check if removing the apostrophe gives us two words and makes sense,as in; “Shyam is late”, “Azim is early”,  “She is tall”, “He is annoying”. On the other hand, “Allepey is canals” is grammatically incorrect. Here,  the possessive apostrophe is at play.