>>1539483No matter which way it's spelt it's an edge case as everywhere else would use an apostrophe to distinguish the possessive form the plural form, i.e "mothers rear" vs "mother's rear". However doing the same in the context of "it" causes it to overlap with the contraction of "it is", so then the question is whether you want to be grammatically inconsistent or avoid misunderstanding. Now English makes a good subconcious effort with it's spelling to avoid homonyms, and you could argue that "it" only ever refers to something singular meaning that since it being plural would be an oxymoron of sorts then it's clear it couldn't mean plural and thus clearly doesn't mean that, and regardless, avoiding the homonym is more "true" to the spirit of English. But the point is that I think it's contentious and which is technically correct I suppose depends on how english deals with other edge cases but regardless, I write that way out of habit and the above makes me not fret too much over it, though maybe I'd consider it more if I was writing a book.
Also, speaking of languages made me think that if noone knows one in english but does in other languaes, then again, I'd be grateful if you post it anyways.A few months ago I came across this while reading wikipedia about something else:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexikon_der_gesamten_Technik. I don't know german, and so can't confirm how much it aligns with what I ask in OP but with OCR I could maybe skim something from it after reading through what exists in english
