how to pronounce "s's"

[fruitfly]

I sometimes get confused about how to pronounce a word that ends with an "s" and has an apostrophe s after it.

I know that you should write names ending with an "s" as "James's" and the plural form of a word as " birds' ".
So do you pronounce "James's" as [Jameses] and " birds' " as [birdses] ? or is it just [birds]?

 

[GoesStation]

It's Jameses and birds.

 

[Rover_KE]

If there is no s after the apostrophe, there is nothing to pronounce.

Although I've noticed that most AE speakers - and more than a few BE speakers - write "James' house", even though they say "James's house".

 

[andrewg927]

Good point. I probably would think of James's as a strange name. Thus I probably pronounce it like jaMESes.

 

[GoesStation]

"James's" isn't a name (unless that word is the name of an establishment). It's the possessive case of "James".

 

[andrewg927]

If you have Hawai'i, Ka'iwi, and Moloka'i, sooner or later you would encounter someone named Jami'e.

 

[GoesStation]

Hawaiian words are often spelled with apostrophes to represent glottal stops, which are important phonemes in the Hawaiian language. They aren't just decorative.

 

[andrewg927]

It is actually called the okina. I follow a bit of the annual race there. My point is though English first names don't typically include an apostrophe but Native Hawaiians might have names with the okina in the spelling (but this is just my speculation).