Is this correct?
the candys 're in the box, the womens're at the car
I know 'you're', 'we're', 'they're' are valid usages, but can it be used for nouns?
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2I assume you are talking about written English? In spoken English, that kind of reduction happens all the time with this verb, including nouns.– KosmonautCommented Sep 14, 2010 at 16:10
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2That would be "the candies're in the box"– user362Commented Sep 14, 2010 at 20:17
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4The plural of "woman" is "women".– GurzoCommented Oct 18, 2010 at 12:02
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4 Answers
Is this correct?
the candys 're in the box
It's not usually considered correct but it is sometimes encountered.
the womens're at the car
That's wrong for other reasons.
I know 'you're', 'we're', 'they're' are valid usages, but can it be used for nouns?
No, not usually.
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As for the "sometimes encountered," I'll throw out that I use "'re" instead of "are" on a lot of things. So do most of the people I know. I think it's just because of the general tendency for syllables without emphasis to get lost in quick speech. It would sound pretty weird to me if someone clearly enunciated the "are" in either of those sentences....Not to mention a lot of others... Commented Sep 14, 2010 at 15:53
Here are the top 21 ’re forms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English:
TOT SPOKEN FICTION MAGAZINE NEWSPAPER ACADEMIC
1 YOU'RE 244694 108878 65509 44733 22486 3088
2 WE'RE 195472 117655 26890 19939 28368 2620
3 THEY'RE 169989 94821 22991 23922 25776 2479
4 WHAT'RE 777 12 721 24 17 3
5 THERE'RE 442 169 211 23 33 6
6 HOW'RE 393 135 234 13 9 2
7 WHO'RE 189 18 130 29 11 1
8 WHERE'RE 142 2 129 5 4 2
9 WHY'RE 66 4 60 2
10 YE'RE 56 51 4 1
11 THAT'RE 33 7 20 3 3
12 'RE 24 22 2
13 YOUR'RE 19 3 7 6 1 2
14 HERE'RE 18 3 9 4 1 1
15 IFYOU'RE 15 14 1
16 PEOPLE'RE 15 14 1
17 HELL'RE 14 14
18 GUYS'RE 11 10 1
19 OWE'RE 10 1 9
20 THINGS'RE 10 10
21 THOSE'RE 10 10
As you can see, forms other than you’re, we’re, and they’re are quite rare in comparison. For the most part, they occur primarily in fiction, although there’re and how’re occur with some frequency in spoken English.
Of course, the two examples given in the original question are not correct because the plural of candy is candies not candys and the plural of woman is women not womens. There were no examples of candies’re in COCA, but there was one example of women’re.
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1@ShreevatsaR: disappointingly, it seems to be just an artefact of the encoding or transcription, with an erroneous “o” appearing at the beginning of sentences. So a typical example is: […]I couldn't prevent the frown from sliding across my face. oWe 're still learning about them[…] I don’t have much of the corpus, so I’ve no idea how these arose.– PLLCommented Dec 5, 2010 at 1:18
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Given that most people transcribing /ðr r θri/ into written speech would transcribe it as "there are three", doesn't "there're" in the spoken English figures just reflect the spelling and punctuation predilections of a handful of transcribers who are trying to eye-dialect what's going on in normal speech? Commented Jul 9, 2017 at 13:45
No, it's not correct. You'd have to say:
the candies are in the box, the women are at the car
answered Sep 14, 2010 at 10:41
We would write The candies are in the box. If a native English speaker says that sentence out loud, they may pronounce it so it sounds more like The candies're in the box. (But we would never write it that way.)
Another example:
We would write The cars are in the parking lot.
If a native English speaker says it out loud, it might end up sounding like The cars're in the box (but we would never write it that way).
