Learn English – Jack’s vs Jacks for “Jack his phone”

writing

I am non-native in English so forgive me if this question is too low level.

If you are talking about something that belongs to a person you can say "Jacks phone" to mean "the phone of Jack", at least, that is how I pronounce it. However, in writing it could also be "Jack's phone" and you wouldn't notice anything different in the pronunciation. So which one is correct?

I thought the first one, because I would say that the second would actually mean "Jack is phone" (which obviously makes no sense), but as a counterexample I can find many diners that are called "…'s diner" which are clearly meant as "The diner of …".

Therefore my question is: which is correct? and what is the rule? Should you recognize the meaning of 's for "is" or "his" from the context?

Best Answer

I am going to go ahead and presume by your name and location that Dutch is your native language.

Writing

Unlike in Dutch, where the possessive is formed in writing simply by adding -s to the noun phrase where possible, modern English orthography requires that there always be an apostrophe present in the possessive.

Therefore, Jack’s coat is the only correct way to write this.

’s is also, as you say, a contraction of is and has. When you see something like Jack’s written, you have to rely on the context to know whether it means ‘… belonging to Jack’, ‘Jack is’, or ‘Jack has’:

Jack’s coat (possessive)
Jack’s a coat (‘is’—and an odd phrase)
Jack’s got a coat (‘has’)
That Michael’s got Jack’s coat’s strange (‘has’ – possessive – ‘is’, in that order)

When the version without the apostrophe, -s, is added to a noun, it always forms plurals, and nothing else; so Jacks means ‘several copies of Jack’ (again, this is the opposite of Dutch, where most nouns take -s in the plural, but those that end in a long vowel take ’s):

There are two Jacks in our class

In other words, your example of Jacks phone does not work in English writing at all. It does not establish any kind of connection between the two noun phrases—it is equivalent to saying women phone, or in Dutch, vrouwen telefoon.

So much for writing.

Speech

It’s much simpler (yet much more complex) in speech. As John Lawler and Barrie England have both mentioned, and as you yourself said also, there is no difference in the pronunciation of -s and ’s (just as in Dutch).

In other words, the following two phrases (the first orthographically correct, the second orthographically nonsensical) are pronounced exactly the same:

That Michael’s got Jack’s coat’s strange
That Michaels got Jacks coats strange

Only the grammatical, intonational, and syntactical context enables you to tell which is which.

‘His’

It should be mentioned at the end here that the possessive clitic ’s does not have anything to do with the possessive adjective/pronoun his.

It is fairly common in the Germanic languages to create periphrastic genitives by using the possessing noun phrase in whatever case syntax prescribes for it and then simply tacking on a ‘his/her/their’ to link it to the possessed noun phrase:

Mannen sin hatt (Norwegian)
Der Mann sein Hut (German)
De man zijn hoed (Dutch)

This, however, is not the origin of the English possessive in ’s came about. The possessive is simply a reinterpreted, simplified, and worn-down version of the old case ending -es, just like in Dutch.

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