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Wednesday 10 January 2007

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this quiz. I already noticed in the past that "its" and "it's" are commonly confused, but I never understood why: while I often make (pretty stupid) mistakes in English, I have difficulties understanding why this one is so common. Its^[1] quite easy to know when you need "its" and when you need "it's", at least that's my feeling. I can understand that this happens to people who are not fluent in English, but I keep wondering why so many native English people are confusing "its" and "it's"...

This is probably quite similar to what we can observe in France, though: many French people can't write correct French and I know non-native French speakers who speak better than most of us :-)

Notes

[1] did you notice something is wrong? :-)

[15:21] | [Mon avis] | [#406]

Comments

1. ralpht [10/01/2007@15:38]

It's because you learn to speak in your native language before you learn to write it, whereas you normally learn to both speak and write a foreign language at the same time.

I make the it's/its mistake more often that I'd like, even though I know the rule. It's also really easy for me to spot the mistake when reading somebody else's writing (but alas, not my own!).

2. foo [10/01/2007@15:43]

The confusion between it's and its occurs because on virtually every other word 's indicates possession, so English speakers naturally want to use it's to mean "something belonging to it."

3. Huygens [10/01/2007@16:08]

It's because you're French. I also always wondered why it was such a trouble (as there are many other more difficult things in English)
But I realise that it is because of my point of view. "Its" would be "son" or "sa" in French, which cannot be mistaken with "it's" that would translate in "c'est". So even though, you don't think and translate in French when speaking/writing English, the difference is pretty clear in your mind.

And vice versa, many French (including myself) make mistakes on infinitives, which non-native won't probably do. It is because the sound is too similar in French (between "mangé" and "manger") there is a difference in meaning but not in pronunciation, however, in English there is often a difference in sound ("eaten" and "eating").

4. John Drinkwater [10/01/2007@16:10]

I quite agree with poster #1, and especially for British people, English isn't taught* as well as it needs to be. There's just an assumption that if you can speak it, you can write it.

*, this is a narrow view of my education though, so take with a pinch of salt.

5. Nicholas O'Leary [10/01/2007@16:27]

I recently came across the following trick to help remember the difference between its and it's. "Its" is used where you would use "His" and "It's" is used where you would use "He's".

6. Matthew East [10/01/2007@16:31]

Nicholas: you don't need a trick - you use an apostrophe where it is replacing a letter. "It's" is short for "it is".

"Foo" is absolutely right about the reason for confusing the two though. That and poor teaching in schools.

7. Andrew Sayman [10/01/2007@16:33]

It's just hard to remember because possession doesn't work the way you would expect given the most common form. They shouldn't have overloaded the apostrophe so much.

8. Julian Turner [10/01/2007@16:41]

It's a common phenomenon. I've noticed that native German speakers have a lot more problems with "das" and "dass" than people who learned German as a foreign language.

9. Rocco Stanzione [10/01/2007@16:56]

It's not difficult. The most common mistakes in written English are surprisingly few, and can be conquered by simply learning what they are and how to avoid them. "Its" is possessive, and "it's" means "it is". That's all you need to know to get it right, but many (most?) people don't. My pet theory is that they can't be bothered. By and large, people who make that mistake are antagonistic toward correction. People know what they mean, so it's good enough for them to drop apostrophes in random locations in the vacinity of the S. "Its'" is not uncommon, for example, for either usage.

Some parts of the language are complicated and difficult, but it's also rare to run into them. For example, if you have a person's name ending in S, and need to make it possessive, does it get another S or doesn't it? The answer is yes, except for ancient names, except for biblical names, except for Jesus. So it's "Bridget Jones's Diary", "Achilles' heel", "Judas's kiss", and "Jesus' disciples". It doesn't turn my stomach to see someone screw that one up, but a mistake as common and as simply understood as "its" and "it's" tends to make me discount whatever is being written.

10. Martin [10/01/2007@17:02]

In Swedish there is a similar phenomenon with people confusing the words "de"(they) and "dem"(them). The origin of this is that both words are pronounced "dom" in casual language. Someone who have learned swedish as a second language and therefore making the connection with for example, in the case of english being the first language, "they" and "them", are probably less likely to make the mistake.

11. HE [10/01/2007@17:18]

My native tounge is Swedish, and I don't really make the its vs. it's or the your vs. you're errors either. My gut feeling is that native english speakers make those errors more frequently than us foreigners.

12. Roger Clark [10/01/2007@17:25]

Rocco: I don't know where you came up with that "ancient names" hogwash, but it definitely isn't true. Grammar and punctuation in the English language -- or any language, really -- aren't dependent on "age" of any sort. It gets even more ridiculous because you specifically mention Biblical stuff.

13. tf [10/01/2007@17:33]

Actually, the reason why "its" and "it's" are commonly confused even by native speakers, and even those who know what the correct usage is and why, is quite simple; the 's grapheme virtually always signifies possession; "it's" is just about the only case in normal contemporary use where this is not the case, and to muddle things more, "its" happens to be a possessive form.

14. Robin Munn [10/01/2007@17:39]

Another example of an easily-confused set of words: "they're sure their car was over there."

:-)

As for the it's/its confusion: yes, it's partly (maybe even mostly) because of the fact that apostrophe plus S indicates the possessive for most nouns (though not most pronouns). But another contributing factor, I think, is that many people just don't read very much. They watch TV, or play video games, or watch (or play) sports for their entertainment rather than reading books, and they only read when it's necessary. Thus they don't get exposed to the written form of it's vs. its very often, and only hear the spoken form (which is absolutely identical in sound). Whereas someone who's as voracious a reader as I am would encounter the difference, in written form, thousands of times. So I never even have to think about which form is correct, because it's sunk into my subconscious by now.

15. Greg K Nicholson [10/01/2007@18:02]

Huygens, actually a lot of people confuse words like "being" and "been" as well - in some accents (such as in the north-east of England) the "ing" sound is often rendered as "en" when spoken.

16. Julian Turner [10/01/2007@19:25]

And Rocco just demonstrated another common mistake in written english: Replacing vowels with other ones that sound the same. Compatability, vacinity, and so on, its just miserible.

17. Robin [10/01/2007@21:25]

I learned English as a foreign language and always notice when someone makes this mistake, but I could never make it myself. As someone said earlier, it's probably because as a non-native learner, you normally read or write more than you speak.

What I have problems with is irregularities in spelling - read the following poem for examples:
ncf.idallen.com/english.h...

18. Frederic Peters [10/01/2007@23:00]

Just read this on linuxfr: « ça porte s'est fruit ».

19. Jesse [11/01/2007@04:17]

Not to add fuel to the fire here, but some native speakers of American English (college level) will write "could of" instead "could have," due to their phonetic similarities in casual speeh.

20. Me [11/01/2007@08:37]

I find it amusing that they speak of teaching correct English but their front page (grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/g... can't even use a simple abbreviation correctly. Did they mean to write "Dr. Charles Darling"? Is his title supposed to be "Drive"? If it's meant to be "Doctor", then they inserted an unnecessary and confusing full stop. Either they made a mistake or that site is an amateur effort.

21. Vincent [11/01/2007@11:02]

Frederic: nice one :-)

22. Murray Cumming [11/01/2007@12:49]

It would be simplest just to allow "It's" where "Its" is currently correctly used. There would be no problem with guessing the meaning of "It's" by looking at the context. I write "Its" correctly, but I think it's an unnecessary pedantic thing that will disappear eventually.

23. Oliver [11/01/2007@22:34]

It's a typo, not a linguistic error. There's no difference between the two in spoken language. Also, its tiny nature makes the typo difficult to spot (it's just a little dot that differentiates the two, remember).

24. skierpage [12/01/2007@00:11]

"It's" is also an abbreviation for "it has", for example "It's been a long drive" or "It's got a big engine".

Murray Cumming, you're on a slippery slope. His, hers, its are possessive pronouns, they already imply "of x" ("hers" is an odd case). If you allow "It's engine is good", then why not allow "Hi's car is broken" and "That car is her's"? I've seen people garble those. Arguing that people can figure out error's is not reeson for to permit thems. There's no ambiguity here in the way English works, just unclear or uncaring authors.

Speaking of confusion, Vincent please don't use the ambiguous "10/01/2007" for dates in your blog (January? October?), instead use the unambiguous world standard ISO8601 format, 2007-01-10.

25. Vincent [12/01/2007@08:26]

> Speaking of confusion, Vincent please don't use the ambiguous "10/01/2007"
> for dates in your blog (January? October?), instead use the unambiguous
> world standard ISO8601 format, 2007-01-10.

Sorry, I didn't think about this when localizing in english this blog ;-) Should be fixed now.

There are still some l10n issues here and there, but they're generally unfixable without hacking the blog software, while l10n is done only in my theme.

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Wednesday 10 January 2007

On the relative difficulty of languages: its/it's

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by Vincent