Plurals

[Nefertiti2]

"Not dhe British publik ov todae, perhaps; but dhaer iz noe reezon whie dhe hoel Inglishspeeking wurld ov fifty yeerz hens shood not duu soe. It iz oenly familyarrity dhat maeks new seem preferabl to nue. I admit, houever, dhat dhe treetment ov whot mae rufly be kauld dhe oo soundz iz dhe moest difikult problem widh which we hav to deel, and our solueshon ov it mae posibly not pruuv dhe best avaelabl. In dhe kors ov a fue yeerz’ trial such kwestyonz wil be desieded bie dhe servieval ov dhe fitest.”"

this Is from a Text by the Simplified Spelling Society

[3 Colours Red]

There was an American guy who pushed for American English to dispose of this sort of spelling. He won with the u in color, humor, and also with swapping the e and the r in center and meter. But I don't think thru ever took off in the same way. Although I have seen it used when space is at a premium (road signs, backs of baseball cards)

Noah Webster. I think writing a dictionary (THE dictionary in a lot of Americans' eyes) helped with his partial successes at reform.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Behold the French language chaps....glass, green, verse, worm and towards whilst spelt differently (in some cases), are all pronounced the same....

[Sits]

I remember asking for help finding garlic in a French hypermarket. I know, it shouldn’t be difficult. They had no idea what I was on about as I was pronouncing “aïl” with one syllable, as “eyy”.

[3 Colours Red]

When French teachers tell you that accents only affect pronunciation if they are over an "e", they're wrong. Very, very wrong.

[Guy Profumo]

Sometimes the plural of lion is lion if you shoot them.

And roundly condemned by Partridge in "Usage and Abusage"

[Guy Profumo]

"Not dhe British publik ov todae, perhaps; but dhaer iz noe reezon whie dhe hoel Inglishspeeking wurld ov fifty yeerz hens shood not duu soe. It iz oenly familyarrity dhat maeks new seem preferabl to nue. I admit, houever, dhat dhe treetment ov whot mae rufly be kauld dhe oo soundz iz dhe moest difikult problem widh which we hav to deel, and our solueshon ov it mae posibly not pruuv dhe best avaelabl. In dhe kors ov a fue yeerz’ trial such kwestyonz wil be desieded bie dhe servieval ov dhe fitest.”"

this Is from a Text by the Simplified Spelling Society

Except it enforces a specific accent and pronunciation
Book, not buk, for example is perfectly acceptable.

Anything else is Newspeak bollockery designed by a self-appointed elite to preach down to the proles.

[DCI Harry Batt]

When French teachers tell you that accents only affect pronunciation if they are over an "e", they're wrong. Very, very wrong.

I've not come across these teachers, but they also should be shot.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

My daughter has just learnt that the plural of sheep is sheep and finds this both hilarious and fascinating.

Does any other language have such varied ways of denoting a plural? Child / children, person / people, dish / dishes, sock / socks? What other odd plurals are there?

In Mandarin Chinese words generally just stay the same. If you want to specify that something is plural you just state the number of them or say something like 'many' first.

Welsh plurals are the bane of my existence at the moment:

You've got a bunch of suffixes
-od (cat = cath -> cats = cathod)
-ion (dyn = man -> dynion = men)
-au (hosan = sock -> hosanau = socks)
-iau (esgid = shoe -> esgidiau = shoes)
-oedd (gorsaf = station -> gorsafoedd = stations)
-ydd
-i

Then you've got things that pluralise by changing or adding vowels:
bachgen = boy, bachgyn = boys (in the north, confusingly, the singular uses hogyn and hogiau)
gwalch = osprey, gweilch = ospreys
dysgwr = learner, dysgwyr = learners

Some that do both:
chwaer = sister chwiorydd = sisters
drws = door, drysiau = doors

Then you've got things that lose (rather than gain) letters:
plentyn = child, plant = children
or switch endings
blodyn = flower, blodau = flowres

some words just get "two" stuck on the front of them
llaw = hand, dwylo = hands (presumably at one point dwylaw)

And adjectives also pluralise (like in e.g. Spanish)
llyfr glas = blue book, llyfrau gleision = blue books.

I hate it all with my life.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Welsh sounds exciting.

Why isn't is suffices / prefices? As per index, matrix etc.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Welsh sounds exciting.

Why isn't is suffices / prefices? As per index, matrix etc.

It is, formally, i think, but no-one ever uses it in part cos suffices is already a word.

[Moonlight Shadow]

I remember asking for help finding garlic in a French hypermarket. I know, it shouldn’t be difficult. They had no idea what I was on about as I was pronouncing “aïl” with one syllable, as “eyy”.

The plural of ail is aulx btw...hardly ever used

[Eggchaser]

I assume that it's pig/pork, cow/beef and sheep/mutton due to the fact that one lot were raising it and another eating it.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

English is really relatively easy to learn.There are very few verb forms to conjugate, subjunctives hardly exist, no genders and plurals are generally easy to form,among other factors.

Yeah, english is like indo-european with stabilisers on cos it's like a subset of the grammar of other languages, pretty much doesn't have features like genders or mutuations. You don't even really encounter much regional variation (even the main dialects either side of the Atlantic are far closer to one another than the four main welsh dialects for example).

People bang on about irregular spellings but since many of the spellings come from latin, greek or common germanic, to speakers of european languages they're likely to be at least vaguely familiar (reading Spanish is fun cos it becomes quite easy once you've learnt a bit of grammar, cos so many words are familiar) and b) is the orthography easier than (say) Gaelic langauges?

[Sits]

Yeah, euphemisms for those eating them.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The plural of ail is aulx btw...hardly ever used

I can't think of an occasion one might use it.

[Balderdasha]

I was at a quiz tonight. A few of the questions in the music demanded that a song be identified by its intro. One of those was Boney M's Rasputin.

When I was working on summer camps in Vietnam, we had to choose a theme song and dance for the camp. Traditionally in China, we'd used "Reach for the stars" by S-Club 7. In Vietnam though, no-one had heard of them. Our British-Vietnamese manager suggested Boney M as an alternative that everyone in Vietnam knew. I didn't know much of their repertoire at the time, but ended up knowing Rasputin word perfectly, complete with ridiculous dance moves.

"Ra-ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen, there was a cat who really was gone".

Not a traditional theme tune, but it worked.

[Sporting]

Boney M were big in Sudan in the mid 80s.

[Balderdasha]

Nope, the first page had a brief discussion of Boney M and Rasputin.

[Sporting]

I just edited my post having realised this.

[Guy Profumo]

It is, formally, i think, but no-one ever uses it in part cos suffices is already a word.

So are Reading and reading, but that's not stopped them

[Balderdasha]

I just edited my post having realised this.

Which now makes my post bizarre as I'm replying to no-one!

[jdsx]

I always liked the problem: which English word is masculine and plural, but when you add an 's', it becomes feminine and singular?

Can't remember how to do spoilers on here just now, but anyway it's:









princes