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According to my dictionary research, both will work... In one definition, American Heritage specifies that "youth" is preferable when discussing a collective, i.e. there may be two "youths" standing in front of the drugstore, but the "youth" of the nation loiter daily...
However, in the secondary definition there is no specification, except to confirm that the "no s" version is used with both s. and pl. verbs.
I see a higher incidence of youth with no s on google...
Nah, nah. (As you see, I got bored again.) "The youth of the nation" refers to the collection of all of them; "the youths of the nation" refers to each of them individually. If you had two youths standing in front of you, you would never refer to them as "the youth in front of me"...unless, I suppose, you meant to talk about their youthfulness rather than them.
I am so glad this came up. It sent me back to this wonderful clip from the film My Cousin Vinny Yoots
This clip raises another question. When you form the plural of youth, do you leave the th unvoiced (thin, thank) with an -s sound on the end, or do you change it to voiced (this, them) with a -z sound on the end?
Vinny clearly prefers the voiced version in his careful pronunciation.
This is off topic again, but it's kind of funny I never realize there is that difference between (thin, thank) and (this, them). I was frowning what was Glenn talking about? until I decided to do the pronunciation experiment on myself for myself. The experiment is to pronounce one pair of words and then use the same 'th' sound to pronounce the other– sure enough the second pair come out sounding quite comical.
I am not sure I am the only person in the English speaking world not already knowing that, or , maybe more likely, just one of many or even a majority.
Glenn, I never thought about it, but you're right: I, too, say /juT/ (unvoiced) in the singular but /juDz/ (voiced) in the plural. Yet /juTs/ sounds fine too. Where did I learn to say /juDz/, I wonder?
(This is using the old-style IPA adapted to ASCII, which used to be seen lurking around alt.usage.english; dunno how many other people use it, but not many as far as I can tell.)
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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