Now, back to that topic starter - the sign that read, "Please Drive Carefully, for our childrens sake. What a mess that is.
Shouldn't it actually read this way? Please drive carefully, for our childrens' sakes.
I beleive this was addressed elsewhere, but the correct version would be
Please drive carefully, for our children's sake. Two points here. The plural possessive is an apostrophe after the s if the s is a plural marker and the
sake in question is one
sake jointly applying to all the children.
In the hills of Western Pa., which is where my mother was born and raised, the townsfolk would refer to "You" in the plural not as another "you," but, rather, as "Youins." Such as, "Are you-ins going to the movies this afternoon?"
Just another example of the strength of the language, changing to adapt to the potentially ambiguous solecism of using the second person plural pronoun as a singular. That there has been no corresponding change in the language to correct for the change that dropped the nominative form of the second person pronoun,
ye, suggests to me that the distinction in form between the nominative and the objective (dative/accusative) is mostly unnecessary.
