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Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

afroboy wrote: post #182
stevula wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by jacobush »

sverige wrote: post #122
weinzierl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can live with "glasses", "pants", "pliers" and "scissors", but "data" drives me crazy because even native speakers seem to be completely inconsistent when it comes to its number. EDIT: Now that I think about it there is another one that is hard for me, even it I know it is the correct form in English: visa (singular) and visas (plural). In my mother tongue it follows the same pattern as datum and data, it's Visum (…

My recent peeve is Americans who use 'bespoke' instead of 'custom.' And 'in agreeance' instead of 'in agreement.'

You has good listenance skills but rate lower on the acceptance scale, agreeance on that?

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

#203

Post by Markoff »

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?

i always thought it's too disassociate the actual animal from meat you are eating to make it anonymous, it's much easier to eat beef than dead cow's meat

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

#204

Post by [deleted] »

konart wrote: post #197

In Russian it's "ребёнок" (child) and "дети" (children). "Дети" is actually a plural form of now archaic "дитя" and used because... "ребёнок" does not have a plural form. The funny thing here is that "ребёнок" while not being archic comes from an anchient-russian "робя", which has plural form "робята", which is actually used in modern language too, but meaning can be anything from "boys" to "guys" or any other genera…

[deleted]

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

#205

Post by Asooka »

xyzzyz wrote: post #140
kazinator wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grammatically plural nouns denoting single objects is something that occurs in multiple European languages (and perhaps others), not only English. English French Slovak pliers pinces kliešte pants pantalons nohavice scissors ciseaux nožnice All plural. The singular "kliešť" exists, but it refers to an insect: the tick. The word "nohavica" is used when referring to just one of the pant legs. (E.g. one being rolled up,…

It’s funny to compare Slovak with Polish — you could also use “kleszcze” for pliers (and “kleszcz” is also tick), but it sounds archaic — today you’d say “szczypce” or “kombinerki”, which are also nouns without singular form. Also, “pants” are called “spodnie”, which also lacks singular form, but “nogawa/nogawka” still means a pant leg.

That's so interesting. In Bulgarian we're starting to interchangeably use singular/plural versions of some of these words. E.g. "scissors" is "nozhici" (ножици), but very often used in its singular "nozhica"; similar with pants - nominally "pantaloni" (borrowed from French, of course), but very often encountered as a "pantalon". However, "pliers" and "glasses" cannot be comfortably made to assume a singular form, so they're always plural.

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

#206

Post by Wildgoose »

weinzierl wrote: post #11
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"??

I can live with "glasses", "pants", "pliers" and "scissors", but "data" drives me crazy because even native speakers seem to be completely inconsistent when it comes to its number. EDIT: Now that I think about it there is another one that is hard for me, even it I know it is the correct form in English: visa (singular) and visas (plural). In my mother tongue it follows the same pattern as datum and data, it's Visum (…

That's because "data" is a "mass noun".

Think coffee - you have one coffee (singular), two coffees (plural), and some coffee (an indeterminate amount).

One datum, Two data, Some data.

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

#207

Post by Markoff »

pff, what we really need it's Chinese language written in pinyin lacking tones, that's as primitive grammar as you can get, it doesn't even have plural

people think Chinese it's complicated language, but the opposite it's truth, the characters and tones are making it scary, but once you get rid off characters and tones it's one of the simplest languages, much more logical than English

English itself it's extremely illogical languag with way too many exceptions not following general rule, heck even Slavic languages (again more difficult at first sight) are more logical than English

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

#208

Post by philipps »

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…

German speaking countries went through an effort to reduce the most obvious spelling exceptions in 1996. It introduced new spelling for many existing words but also allowed the use of the previous spelling to continue (in effect creating the situation OP describes where different options are equally valid). I lived in Germany at the time and remember a lot of resistance and confusion after the changes went through. Also, some of the leading newspapers defined their own in-house rules (based on valid interpretation of the official rules).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of...

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

#209

Post by olavk »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #179
olavk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are mixing up Norsemen and Normans. Norsemen (Scandinavians, sometimes called Vikings) spoke a Germanic language (called old Norse, the ancestor of current Scandinavian languages), while the Normans spoke French. English have been influenced by both, but the Norman invasion was later. Beef, veal, mutton etc. are from french.

The Normans were partly descended from the Norsemen. They tried to conquer England for the best part of a millennium, failed, conquered parts of France and Italy instead - by war and diplomacy - and then conquered England.

Normans descended from the Norse (hence the name) but the Normans adopted the French language which is the point here.

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

#210

Post by konart »

0ld wrote: post #186
BerislavLopac wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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')

In russian (and most likely some other slavic langauges) beef ("говядина") is meat of any cattle because it comes from anchient-russian "говядо" which literally means "cattle".

Pretty much same for ox - from the old form of "big" "великий" - big animal.

Cow "корова" most likely comes from protoslavic korva and most likely inherited from ancient-indian "carvati" - "chewing".

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