Dear Editor,
Have you ever wondered why we use Nurses’ Day and not Nurse’s Day, although we have Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, for example? It certainly does not mean that we are celebrating for all the nurses and only one father or mother.
Could this also be the reason we are seeing more people using the plural term for many words, or adding ‘s’ to words unnecessarily?
As we know, there is no governing body for the English Language. Many would say that this has allowed the language to progress and be in step with the time. However, if you bother to take a step back and think carefully, does it really make the language more progressive or regressive now? Why are we making the language more complicated than it is already?
This brings one to another mistaken point – English is a language that is easy to be learned. If you think about it, it is actually quite difficult to master English unless you want to forego the beauty and fineness of the language and are not bothered by the confusion caused by using wrong words, verbs, and expressions, adding unnecessary words, or dropping necessary words.
Having a governing body does not necessarily stifle the progress of the language. If we have a governing body that has a system similar to the governing system we have in Singapore, where the Government sets the rules, after taking all the considerations of the public and making decisions to satisfy the majority, the governing body can still be seen as a good and successful one.
Regards
Steven Lee
news@theindependent.sg