The United States's singular nature

[BeBMan]

I thought they only make silly language changes here in Ger.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
BTW, prior to the Amer Civil War, it was customary to say "The United States have" IE to treat it as a plural. After the Civil War, the usage as a singular became standard.

That figures. The individual states had more power then, and the federal gummnit less. I suspect as the power of the federal gov't grew, the concept of the USA as one united entity did as well and resulted in The United States has...

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Arrian


That figures. The individual states had more power then, and the federal gummnit less. I suspect as the power of the federal gov't grew, the concept of the USA as one united entity did as well and resulted in The United States has...

-Arrian

My impression it less the gradually increasing power of the fed govt, and more the triumph of the concept of the US as one nation, rather than as a federation of sovereign states.

[Arrian]

The two sort of go hand-in-hand, though, don't you think?

-Arrian

[Elok]

WRT "join together," look up "pleonasm."

[Wernazuma III]

At first, thanks for your answer, that made things clear - I won't use the "'s" then.

Now for the second:

Originally posted by Wycoff
The thing that drives me crazy today is the usage of an apostrophe to show plurality. For example, people are starting to write "We have ten dog's" rather than "We have ten dogs."

We have something similar happening here. People start changing the German genitive s-ending into a 's-possessive ending, just like in English. The problem: this does not exist in German.
Especially pubs and shops do that. In German, "Hermanns Bar" would be correct, now it's "Hermann's Bar". That is especially bothersome when the name has some dialect in it, like: "Mitzi's Stubn" or "Maxi's Beisl".

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Elok
WRT "join together," look up "pleonasm."

I didn't want to use difficult words.

[Elok]

No, pleonasm is the name for that phenomenon of redundant phrasing. It's quite common in English, and mostly occurs for emphasis.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Elok
No, pleonasm is the name for that phenomenon of redundant phrasing. It's quite common in English, and mostly occurs for emphasis.

In German, you can hear the word at best in high school - if you have a good language teacher. However, I doubt that more than 1-2% actively use it.

[Elok]

Yeah, we don't use it much here either. I was just showing off.

[Dinner]

The United States are one entity so I'd go with the singular when refering to it as a proper noun. I.E. There maybe many states in the United States but there is only one United States.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The United States are one entity so I'd go with the singular when refering to it as a proper noun. I.E. There maybe many states in the United States but there is only one United States.

Well, yes, that's what I said in the OP. The question was about the possessive ending.

[Dauphin]

'Joined together' is not a redundant usage particularly, as you can be 'joined by', and they have different connotations to simply 'joined'.

[Colon™]

The obvious solution would be to refer to the USA as "America".

[DanS]

Originally posted by BeBro
I thought they only make silly language changes here in Ger.

Well, none of this is official, as in coming down from the gov't. The Modern Language Association (MLA) puts out certain guidebooks from time-to-time, but they should be treated more as style suggestions rather than rules.