Apostrophe S-&gt;It was the epicenter of sanfrancisco arts movement (It was the epicenter of sanfrancisco arts movement) I heared the above sentence in a podcast, we can think that the text is like th

Daniel

Apostrophe S->It was the epicenter of sanfrancisco arts movement (It was the epicenter of sanfrancisco arts movement) I heared the above sentence in a podcast, we can think that the text is like this: It was the epicenter of sanfrancisco art's movement Or It was the epicenter of sanfrancisco arts' movement But my questions is, why didnt he say "sanfrancisco('s) art's or arts'[this part is not important, my question is only about sanfrancisco's apostrophy S] movement?" and why did he chose the above question?

Feb 10, 2017 3:03 PM

Answers · 8

My reaction was exactly the same as Martin's. I suspect the sentence was "It was the epicenter of the San Francisco arts movement." No apostrophe or 's' is needed, because "the San Francisco arts movement" is a compound noun. It's easy to miss little unstressed words like 'the' in connected speech. The vowel was probably so reduced as to be virtually inaudible, and you didn't hear the 'th' sound because it seemed to merge with the 's' of 'San'. Listen again and see there's a hint of a 'the' before 'San'.

February 10, 2017

I agree with Martin and Su.ki. I will add that it also could have been "the epicenter of San Francisco's arts movement" and then the apostrophe-s would be used after the city name.

February 10, 2017