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Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

grammarphobia.com

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Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#181

Post by BerislavLopac »

rplnt wrote: post #177
noobermin wrote: post #126

I can't believe they discussed plurals in English and missed the most interesting piece! The -s endings came after Norsemen conquered England, and the introduction of it was from their language, connected to old French. This also is why in English, you have words like "ox/cows" and "beef": the Norsemen who were nobles essentially influenced the English to use their words for the animals since they were served as food…

Why do Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak at least (not similar at all), have these differences as well? Was it also a foreign influence?

Which "these" differences exactly?

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#182

Post by afroboy »

stevula wrote: post #131
noobermin wrote: post #126

I can't believe they discussed plurals in English and missed the most interesting piece! The -s endings came after Norsemen conquered England, and the introduction of it was from their language, connected to old French. This also is why in English, you have words like "ox/cows" and "beef": the Norsemen who were nobles essentially influenced the English to use their words for the animals since they were served as food…

Old English had [a plural ending in S]( https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Nouns#Strong_Nouns ) that predates Norman invasion. You might be able to argue the Normans influenced the normalization towards plurals endings in S, but languages are generally pretty resistant to borrowing grammatic features wholesale versus, say, borrowing vocabulary.

> but languages are generally pretty resistant to borrowing grammatic features wholesale versus, say, borrowing vocabulary.

Not always check Spanish for example they took a lot from Arabic, like 'EL'.

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#183

Post by hrnnnnnn »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #119
justinpombrio wrote: post #104

The book The Unfolding of Language[1] describes the forces that shape how language evolves. One is extending the use of a pattern (e.g. "en" for plural), even in cases like this one where it wasn't technically appropriate. Another is the use of metaphor. E.g. "discover" used to mean "to remove the cover of", but now its meaning is purely metaphorical and the literal meaning has been mostly lost. Another is laziness:…

I was amazed to discover that oranges used to be called "noranges" but "a norange" was corrupted into "an orange".

Same with "nuncle" -> "uncle".

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nuncle

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#184

Post by dctoedt »

It'd be great if we native English-speakers would tolerate — and even encourage — "mistakes" in English to streamline (refactor?) the language and make it easier for non-native speakers to become fluent:

+ The world would be better off with an easy-to-use, global lingua franca.

+ For historical reasons, both good and bad, at the moment English is the logical candidate. (The use of an alphabet also supports English as a global lingua franca, but "misspellings" should be tolerated as well as discussed at length in the comments here.)

+ We should accept usages such as "childs," vice children, and "it's" as a possessive, as being proper English and not mistakes. (English as a Second Language teachers could doubtless come up with a long list of such "mistakes.")

Such an approach to achieving a common global tongue would be more likely to succeed than was seen with Esperanto.

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#185

Post by konart »

wtetzner wrote: post #8
ssijak wrote: post #5

Because some dude or gal somewhere some time ago thought it would be funny that generations to come would need to learn irregular forms of some random words! Why would grammar rules apply all the same to all the words, not that logical is it? /s

English is made up of words from many other languages. It only got a set of rules after the fact, which is why there are so many exceptions.

> so many exceptions.

You know nothing, Jonh Snow (seriously though, from a russian point of view English has very few of them)

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#186

Post by 0ld »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #181
rplnt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak at least (not similar at all), have these differences as well? Was it also a foreign influence?

Which "these" differences exactly?

The non-related words for ox, cow and beef. I can confirm the same at least in Czech, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian. But not in, say, Polish (where 'beef' has its root from 'ox')

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#187

Post by V-2 »

dctoedt wrote: post #184

It'd be great if we native English-speakers would tolerate — and even encourage — "mistakes" in English to streamline (refactor?) the language and make it easier for non-native speakers to become fluent: + The world would be better off with an easy-to-use, global lingua franca. + For historical reasons, both good and bad, at the moment English is the logical candidate. (The use of an alphabet also supports English as…

> It'd be great if we native English-speakers would tolerate — and even encourage — "mistakes" in English to streamline (refactor?) the language and make it easier for non-native speakers to become fluent

This is how languages evolve already. Mistakes become accepted over time.

The problem with "turning it up to 11" (or not offering mistakes any resistance before giving in to them; being conservative about it helps to single out the most persistent ones, working as natural selection of sorts)... is that not all the learners will make the same mistakes.

> English as a Second Language teachers could doubtless come up with a long list of such "mistakes."

Exactly, it would be a very long list. And much dependent on the background of the learner (aka their first language). What'd be obvious and easy for me as a Pole is not necessarily the same for a Spaniard.

Meaning this approach would lead to further diversification, rather than unification of the language.

> "misspellings" should be tolerated as well

As a non-native speaker, I'm pretty sure that widespread acceptance for spelling mistakes would pose more difficulty for me in the long run.

It is way easier for a native speaker to see past them.

So, while your mileage may vary, I, for one, vote thanks but no thanks :)

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#188

Post by rowaway93 »

dctoedt wrote: post #184

It'd be great if we native English-speakers would tolerate — and even encourage — "mistakes" in English to streamline (refactor?) the language and make it easier for non-native speakers to become fluent: + The world would be better off with an easy-to-use, global lingua franca. + For historical reasons, both good and bad, at the moment English is the logical candidate. (The use of an alphabet also supports English as…

the parents idea is totally bonkers, who needs abostrophes anyway ...

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#189

Post by dragonwriter »

Aardwolf wrote: post #2

Worse imho is the "glasses", "pants", "pliers", "scissors", etc thing. Single object with plural name just because it happens to be made of two similar parts. Most objects are made of multiple parts though and they get a singular name just fine. That and the "double u", why not "we"??

> Worse imho is the "glasses", "pants", "pliers", "scissors", etc thing. Single object with plural name just because it happens to be made of two similar parts.

As a countable noun, aside from also being a drinking vessel, "a glass" is a lens or monocle. A pair of glasses is exactly a pair of those. These definitions are still in current use.

Its true that the singular terms for the others are no longer in common current use, so the plural seems odd, but glasses is a particularly bad example.

Re: Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

#190

Post by rowaway93 »

jwilk wrote: post #178
TeMPOraL wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "'et', per-se 'and'" I'm having trouble parsing this. What was the meaning of this phrase?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ampersand has the following etymology for "ampersand": A mondegreen of "and per se and", meaning "and (the character) '&' by itself", which is how the symbol (&) was originally referred to in English. This formulation is due to the fact that in schools, when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," "O" and, at one point, "&") was preceded…

This is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, is it april fools day? I read about "amper's and". Although I have no idea what an amper is, if memory serves the whole thing is related to merchant short hand, but it cannot get any more ridiculous than this joke somebody is having on you.
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