Is using possessive pronouns after a name to show possession instead of apostrophe grammatical, like “John his car” for “John’s car”? [closed]
I've sometimes seen people use this so I was wondering if it is actually correct grammar or not. Couldn't find anything saying that this is correct nor anything saying that this is wrong online.
What I'm talking about is people saying e.g. "John his car" or "Apple their product designer" instead of "John's car" or "Apple's product designer".
Does anyone know if this is grammatically correct or not and could maybe even link some sources?
This practice, which is sometimes known as the his genitive, is not considered grammatical in present-day English.
The Wikipedia summary is:
The his genitive is a means of forming a genitive construction by linking two nouns with a possessive pronoun such as “his” (e.g. “my friend his car” instead of “my friend’s car”). This construction enjoyed only a brief heyday in English in the late 16th century and the 17th century, but is common in some of the dialects of a number of Germanic languages, and standard in Afrikaans.
If you read their article and follow through to the primary sources, you will see that this formulation never occurred in Old English, and that during a brief period it occurred as mistaken hypercorrection. It was all a big mistake.