Nerdy Grammar Question

[Shirosaki]

Nerdy Grammar Question

Soooo guys I know you're all fairly intelligent and I can't be bothered googling this so I thought I'd let you all do it for me.

When talking about the wife (singular) of other people (plural) how does it go?

Other people's wifes? (Wives is plural of wife so this doesn't look right full stop)
Other people's wives? (This makes it sound like these people have more than 1 wife)
Other people's wife's? (' for possession means that this is technically wrong)

Gracias mis amigos.

 

[Fenrir]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

Other peoples' wives

 

[Skotekal]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

Not the middle one. That makes it sound as if they have more than one wife per husband.

I'll go with the first one. Probably wrong though.

 

[droded]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

None of the options are grammatically correct I'm afraid.

Other peoples' wives

This is the correct answer.

It sounds like there is more than one wife because there is - the husbands don't share one wife.

 

[Gikoku]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

Other peoples' wives

None of the options are grammatically correct I'm afraid.

There's your answer right there.

 

[Shirosaki]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

Right thanks, rep all round

 

[Skotekal]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

I told you not to trust me. :lol:

I know, it is fairly sad that I have trouble with the language I speak.

 

[Necromancer]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

It's actually other people's wives. When you put the apostrophe after the S, you're talking about more than one people (as in the sentence, "We are all one people."), rather than more than one person.

 

[droded]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

It's actually other people's wives. When you put the apostrophe after the S, you're talking about more than one people (as in the sentence, "We are all one people."), rather than more than one person.

In this case, 'people' is the plural of 'person'.

 

[Necromancer]

Re: Nerdy Grammar Question

^Exactly, which is why the apostrophe goes before the S. When the plural of a word does not end in an S, you would put an apostrophe, then an S to show possession. Another example of this (besides people) would be children. It would be "the children's toys" rather than "the childrens' toys" if you're talking about the toys of more than one child. This is because "childrens" is not a word, just as "peoples" would refer to something other than what Shirosaki is talking about.