Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by V-2 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

jherdman wrote: post #213

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…

English is refactored quite frequently. I'm by no means an expert, but here are some observations. * American English could be considered one such refactoring. Some common changes include: removing vowels without sound (e.g. "labour" => "labor", "colour" => "color"), removing duplicate letters ("programme" => "program"), and reversing some "re" words (e.g. "theatre" => "theater"). More details: https://en.wikipedia.o…

I wonder whether it has converted into less spelling mistakes committed by AE users (in comparison to BE users)... Obviously, controlling for variables such as level of education and the like... Have there been any studies on the subject?

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

#232

Post by bloak » Mon, May 28, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

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'.

Do you mean the sound combination "el", or the fact of having a definite article?

Latin did not have articles. The use of articles is a grammatical feature that has been borrowed between languages. But yes: that kind of borrowing is a lot less frequent than borrowing of vocabulary.

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

#233

Post by jMyles » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

whatsstolat wrote: post #49

jMyles wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still - I'm pretty sure I encounter the word "peoples" more frequently than the word "datum." :-)

I see the word datum often in code

Yeah? I don't. And it doesn't seem like a great name in code. Link me to some examples?

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

#234

Post by mc32 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #157

mc32 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some contexts the plural of datum is datums, making it a bit more complicated than just a collective noun.

That's interesting. I've never encountered "datums" but a quick Google search turned up plenty of examples (like "Tidal Datums" ) and that "This plural is permissible only in the sense of 'fixed reference points'" [1]. Which contexts did you have in mind? [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/datums

Yes things like surveying and mapping was what I was thinking—similar.

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

#235

Post by lvkleist » Mon, May 28, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

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…

This is interesting! For the same reason, words for family, body parts and curse words usually have Germanic roots, and Germanic "house" has a different connotation than French "mansion". This article explains it very well: https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/17/swear-words-e...

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

#236

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, May 28, 2018, 8:38 PM UTC

olavk wrote: post #209

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Although, interestingly, they spoke a dialect of French that is different from, for example, Parisian French. And you can tell when a word was borrowed into English from French based on whether it starts with consonant sounds that are from the Norman dialect vs. the Parisian dialect. As an example (IIRC), William is a Norman name, whereas Guillaume is the Parisian version of the same name.

Side note: if that kind of stuff is interesting to you, I can highly recommend The History of English podcast.

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

#237

Post by anitil » Mon, May 28, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #114

anitil wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native speaker I refuse to say 'these data' or the word datum. I prefer 'this data' for plural and 'this piece of data' for singular. Yes I know its wrong in some sense, but I think that ship has sailed

"Datum" (and its plural, "datums") is legitimate if you're talking about, eg, one filled-out survey form, or one array element. It's basically like "water molecule"; you wouldn't say "these water are cold", but "this datum is a outlier" makes sense.

While I understand, and agree that you are correct, I still don't like this wording. I prefer the sound of 'this data point is an outlier' or 'this point is an outlier'

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

#238

Post by dennisgorelik » Tue, May 29, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

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…

> "ребёнок" does not have a plural form

"Ребята" is the plural form for singular "ребёнок". However the meaning of "ребята" is migrating from "children" to "young guys".

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

#239

Post by landtuna » Tue, May 29, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #171

yosito wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh! That suddenly makes the Spanish "naranja" seem way more connected!

I don't know the connection but it is called narangi in Hindi, which is suspiciously close to not be connected.

Makes sense. It's borrowed from Sanskrit through Arabic: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/naranja

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

#240

Post by konart » Tue, May 29, 2018, 6:08 AM UTC

dennisgorelik wrote: post #238

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…

> "ребёнок" does not have a plural form "Ребята" is the plural form for singular "ребёнок". However the meaning of "ребята" is migrating from "children" to "young guys".

this is what I've wrote