听播客学英语 188 撇号灾难

 　　In a podcast last week, I talked about apostrophes – the little commas that we sometimes write above letters in English. Do you know the rules about when to write an apostrophe, and when not to write one?

　　You should write an apostrophe;

　　1. when you leave letters out. For example, when you write “I’m” instead of “I am”.

　　2. to show possession or ownership. For example, “John’s shirt is red”. “John’s” means “belonging to John” – the shirt belongs to John, so we write an apostrophe before the letter “s”.

　　You should not write an apostrophe:

　　1. in front of a letter “s” where the “s” is the plural¹ ending of a noun. For example, “I have three books” has no apostrophe – the “s” at the end of “books” simply means that “books” is plural – there is more than one book. So, no apostrophe.

　　2. in personal adjectives and pronouns such as hers, his, its, theirs, yours.

　　There is an exercise on apostrophes which you may find helpful – if you are listening on iTunes or an iPod you will need to go to the podcast website to find the exercise.

　　I have to tell you that many English people get very confused about when to use an apostrophe and when not to. If you visit Britain, you will find lots of examples of public signs, notices in shop windows etc where someone has written an apostrophe which should not be there. The worst offenders² are people who sell fruit and vegetables from market stalls You will often see signs saying “apple’s” or “orange’s” with an apostrophe that should not be there. We often call these “greengrocers’ apostrophes” – a greengrocer is someone who sells fruit and vegetables. The picture on the website shows a sign on a market stall in the town of Ely in the east of England.You will also be able to see it on the screen of your iPod. It says, “Top quality hard English conferance pear’s”. ( “Conference pears” are a particular variety of pear that grows well in England – but have you noticed that the word “conference” is spelled wrongly?) And look, there is an apostrophe before the “s” in pears. There should, of course, be no apostrophe, because “pears” here is simply the plural of “pear” – it doesn’t mean “belonging to pear”, nor are there letters left out.

　　The second bit of the notice says “3lb for 1.50”. What does “lb” mean? It means “pounds” – not pounds in money, but pounds in weight. In England, until recently, we measured the weight of things in pounds, and in America they still do. A pound is about half a kilo. When I was at school – many, many years ago – we had to learn that 16 ounces made a pound, 14 pounds made a stone, 8 stone made a hundredweight and 20 hundredweight made a ton. Yes, it was very complicated! And we had to learn about pints⁴ and gallons for measuring liquids, and inches, feet and yards for measuring distances. Nowdays, children learn metric measurements at school, and since 1995 shops must use metric measurements for everything they sell. We only use the old imperial measurements for beer and milk (where people still measure in pints – a pint³ is about half a litre), and for distances on roads, which are in miles – a mile is 1.6 kilometers. However, old people like me still think in the old measurements. If I cut a piece of wood, for example, I still measure it in inches and not in centimeters. When I bake a cake, I weigh the flour and sugar in ounces, not in grams. And the greengrocer in Ely market obviously finds all these modern kilos too difficult, so he or she still sells pears by the pound.

1 plural   

n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的

参考例句：

• Most plural nouns in English end in's '.英语的复数名词多以s结尾。
• Here you should use plural pronoun.这里你应该用复数代词。

2 offenders   

n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 )；犯规者；罪犯；妨害…的人（或事物）

参考例句：

• Long prison sentences can be a very effective deterrent for offenders. 判处长期徒刑可对违法者起到强有力的威慑作用。
• Purposeful work is an important part of the regime for young offenders. 使从事有意义的劳动是管理少年犯的重要方法。

3 pint   

n.品脱

参考例句：

• I'll have a pint of beer and a packet of crisps, please.我要一品脱啤酒和一袋炸马铃薯片。
• In the old days you could get a pint of beer for a shilling.从前，花一先令就可以买到一品脱啤酒。

4 pints   

n.品脱( pint的名词复数 )；一品脱啤酒

参考例句：

• I drew off three pints of beer from the barrel. 我从酒桶里抽出三品脱啤酒。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Two pints today, please. 今天请来两品脱。 来自《简明英汉词典》