No, that is the ruleS. Two of them. In direct contradiction. One of them only applied to a single word. It is not the "contraction rule" or the "possessive rule," but the "it's/its" rule. Far worse, it exists, not to make the language richer, more versatile or, heaven forbid, easier to understand, but because... well, because someone said we should ignore the rule we observe in ALL OTHER CASES, and other people, for reasons known but to them and God, accepted that decision.


English, like every language of which I am unaware, has irregular verbs, but not because a group of scholars and/or writers somewhere intentionally did it that way to screw up the language and frustrate non-native speakers for all time. We get beef from cows, not beeves, because Harold lost at Hastings, not because some Medieval usage panel made an arbitrary decision to mess up the language. It does not make English any more "interesting" or "versatile," only more "confusing." Contradictions are not "the heart" of the language; the heart of the language is (ironically) a lot closer to the language I am trying to learn now, combined with the difficulty of defending a tiny island when using bronze swords against iron ones and iron ones against steel ones. I love English, too, but it is VERY screwed up owing to nearly 2000 years of invasion after invasion periodically upsetting its stability with whole new lexicons and grammars, so that it has been bastardized by Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Norse, Danish, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman just to name the ones of which I am aware. I pity people learning English as a second language; the only saving grace is that English is far less prone to noun declensions (and I can think of none for modifiers) than most other languages.

I say, "stood" for the same reason I say, "sat:" they are irregular verbs; I recognize but do not relish that and live with the consequences, but irregular verbs are most definitely a bug rather than feature in any language (I understand French is notorious for them.) Imagine my delight to learn that, while English verbs are conjugated in at least two ways in the present tense alone (and the oft used state of being verb in THREE,) Norwegian only has a single conjugation for each tense of each verb. There is no risk of embarrasing errors like "I sits" or "he go." No language is perfect though; there are FOUR possible ways a "regular" (and I use the term very loosely) Norwegian verb can be conjugated in the past tense. Neither oddity makes either language more versatile or interesting; the need to say, "I am/you are/he is," is just two more things to remember; the ability to say, "I/you/he is" would be FAR more versatile. Though I do wish Norwegian did not conjugate the present tense AND form plurals with the same "er," but I guess I will get used to distinguishing between verbs and nouns based on context.

In the case of the apostrophe, it is clear from context that I am deliberately omitting them in possessives, but that does not require and thus there is no reason to think I ignore the rule about nouns ending with "s;" the need to avoid ambiguity as well as the existence of the rule itself gives strong reason to think I continue to observe it.


Not at all, and I have no problem with necessary exceptions to established standards, nor contradictory ones that are so ancient and integral to the language that few but scholars know why they exist. Establishing a single aberrant and needless exception just for the heck of it, however, is not only pointless but confusing. It adds nothing to the language except counterproductive complication, which is a very good reason to maintain a uniform standard. Hence it is not the consistency that is foolish here, but the inconsistency.


Standarization is highly desirable when it removes nothing and adds something, and undesirable when it does the opposite. In this case the standardization makes it easier to communicate without sacrificing a thing. For native speakers of several other Germanic languages, dropping the possessive apostrophe altogether makes English easier to learn because the rule for possessives is "same as in my language." THAT is versatility.