On the baskets for the bookkeepers it clearly says "book-keepers." Is this correct for the time or an error? I believe it may avoid an anachronism. About a hundred years ago the word "to-day" was always hyphenated. Many of our compound words have evolved this way.
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Drake
FYI
It was probably a mistake but then the film is absolutely littered with them.
For instance - I am sure that in Dickens's time there were no frogs working in offices, or any frogs married to pigs. But I could be mistaken about that last bit.
Book-keeper is still proper English, and may be widespread in Britain where the film was partially produced.
When you watch any Muppet movie you are implicitly expected to suspend belief about the frogs' and pigs' non-human status.
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Drake
FYI
Perhaps you could also be expected to assume that, perhaps, Scrooge's knowledge of the correct use of grammar was not as good as yours?
And anyway, the film was made by Americans, so blame them.
Does it really matter? Did it actually spoil your enjoyment of the film to the extent that this became an issue for you?
Did it actually spoil your enjoyment of the film ...Au contraire! The fact that such an unrealistic film actually avoided an anachronism was incredible!
[deleted]
Still thinking about that middle finger (not so)Super Thinker?
shareWhy are we so over-thinking the frog/pig thing? It's the Muppets, people!
shareMartin_66 wrote:
It was probably a mistake but then the film is absolutely littered with them.
For instance - I am sure that in Dickens's time there were no frogs working in offices, or any frogs married to pigs. But I could be mistaken about that last bit.
Wow! For someone so quick to say a film is littered with mistakes such as a hyphen in the word "bookkeeper" (even though it's still technically proper, despite not popular), I figure you would at least be careful or aware that spelling "Dickens'" as "Dickens's" could be subject to the exact same criticism.
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In the past it was a very general, as it is now a not infrequent, practice to form the genitive singular of all nouns ending in s and especially those ending in ss (“hostess”) by adding an apostrophe to both the nominative singular (“a hostess’ duties”, “your Highness’ pleasure”) and of course in the plural (“The three hostesses’ houses were in Park Lane.”). But now it is usual to form the singular genitive by adding ’s (“a hostess’s duties”, “your Highness’s pleasure”) which seems to be a sensible idea, for if you can say “three hostesses’ houses”, you can easily say “a hostess’s duties”. There is, however, a strong tendency to retain Jesus’ and Demosthenes’, Socrates’, and other such genitives of Greek proper names.http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/ab0possessive.php
Hey Geeky,
check the first post in this thread - I wasn't the one bringing up the issue with the hyphen - I was asking why it was such an issue.
I notice that you haven't challenged my obviously ludicrous statement that frogs didn't work in offices though.