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Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)
- Aardwolf 8y agoWorse 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"??
- amaccuish 8y agoIn other languages, there is a number (dual) that deals with cases like this. It's been dropping from most languages where it's used. In Russian it's mostly gone, but alot of the endings remain. Also lot's of languages when borrowing from English do away with the plural if it's obvious. Like in french, a pair of jeans is just un jean, singular.
- gizmo686 8y agoDual doesn't really help in this case. In a dual system, we would have something like: 1 pant 2 pantx 3+ pants The problem with the words op is describing is that they should, semantically, belong to the category of 1 object, but morphologically (and syntactically) belong to the category of not-1 object. Adding a separate category for 2 objects does not address this.
- SilasX 8y agoEnglish has some vestiges of the grammatical dual, in terms of having a special word for the case of two: both vs all, either vs any, neither vs none. (And for real pedants, between vs among.)
- csours 8y agoFor the sake of being a contrarian, there are two pieces of "glass" in a glasses. I do wonder if simpler english will ever catch on I do wondr if simplr nglsh wil evr cach on.
- _red 8y agoHow long are we going to continually spell things like: knife, night, knight, thought, etc. When you add up the generations of wasted human effort in spelling words in such pointless ways, its mind boggling.
- jacobolus 8y agoIndefinitely. If you want a history of attempts to fix it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...
- posterboy 8y agowhat do you suggest instead: naif, nife, nyve ..?
- whatsstolat 8y agoMove to a phonetic alphabet. E.g. Arabic.
- posterboy 8y agoWe could also just add accents, diacrits to exhaustion to englissh letters. Without that in arabic you couldn't even tell /a/, /e/, /i/ apart, they are all aleph in word initial position. Our orthographie is phine, your pronnuntzashun is just lazy
- kimmk 8y agoYou can write phonetically on the Latin alphabet perfectly fine, for example Finnish does so. In the case of English, its a matter of standardizing the pronunciation of characters (considering it requires every English speaker to essentially learn to write/read again, just changing the alphabet to Arabic is almost easier).
- analog31 8y agoFiguring out those things requires too many maths. ;-)
- sverige 8y agoThat's one of the best tells to detect non-Americans when communicating in writing only. Get them to talk about uni and how much they enjoyed maths.
- weinzierl 8y agoI 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 (singular) and Visa (plural).
- jMyles 8y ago"People" too - as inconsistently numbered as data.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pluma 8y agoThat one is actually because it's two different words: "people" is the plural form of "person", i.e. one person, two people, as a group "people" (pl. "peoples") is a group of people as a unit, e.g. a tribe or an ethnic group or the citizens of a country "persons" is ALSO the plural of "person" but only used when you talk about individuals rather than a group (e.g. "person of interest" -> "persons of interest", not "people of interest") Yes this is a bit awkward and yes sometimes what's grammatically possible still sounds awkward even to native speakers (e.g. I'd argue "the polices" is a legitimate term when discussing multiple police organisations of a country as an abstract group but it sounds extremely wrong to most people apparently).
- wafflebear 8y agoI believe "persons" is similar to "people" but differs in register. For example, there is a UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Obviously, native speakers would say "people with disabilities" in almost every situation, but that would be too informal for the title of a treaty. Likewise, law enforcement use formal speech such as "persons of interest" to bolster their authority, but nobody would ever say "I sat next to two Australian persons on the flight".
- notahacker 8y agoIsn't this pretty common in other European languages though? "Pants" is after all an abbreviation of pantalones
- walshemj 8y agoA lot less strange that intimate objects having a gender as you do a French and many other languages
- NullPrefix 8y agos/intimate/inanimate/ ?
- lobster_johnson 8y agoAt this point gender in most languages has almost nothing to do with the semantic meaning of the words themselves -- biological gender or whatever -- and we might as well call it something less culturally loaded like "noun class". A famous example is "das Mädchen" in German -- a masculine (edit: neuter, I mean!) noun for a biologically feminine person. Languages are littered with such inconsistencies, and as a language learner almost all of the genders are not discoverable from the semantic meaning of the word. Why is "ei bok" (Norwegian for "a book") feminine, when it's categorically an inanimate thing?
- yorwba 8y ago"Das Mädchen" is actually neuter, because it's descended from the diminutive of "Magd" (English "maid"). It's the same for "das Jüngelchen", except that "der Junge" is much more common for boys. I don't think there's any case where German has a word of the opposite gender for a person whose gender is known, because it's usually easy to adapt the default (masculine) form by appending "-in".
- lobster_johnson 8y agoI meant neuter! I studied German for three years in school, but my brain got its wires crossed there for a second.
- rowaway93 8y agoI have a hunch that the nominally feminine gender is rather one of subjunction, not to say subjugation. Der Himmel -> Die Sonne -> Das Wetter. Der Tag -> Die Nacht -> Das Jahr. Der Mond -> Die Sterne -> Das Pantheon ... OK, I am not quite sure, but at least gender was an innovation in Germanic, whereas the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European knew inflection for in-/animate -- e.g. there were two different words for fire, where the the other gave ignition [1]. It stands to reason that the feminin came to be at the boundary between these. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/p%C3%A9h%E2%82%82wr%CC%A5 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... PS: This is fun ... Der Mensch -> Die Familie -> Das Dorf. Der Krieger, die Krieger, das Kriegen. Der Aktionär -> die Aktie. Die Aktionärinnen ... das Aktienpaket. Der Karren (car), Die Karre (load), das Ankarren, das Herangekarrte, das Karree (See [2] for more on four wheels, strange animism, etc. Ultimately inconclusive). Note that the pluralizing morpheme -en was written -in in old german. Also note that many case inflections come out as -en, so I suppose that female forms were in the objectified part of speech more often, where the gender is not reflected in the article (den Kindern, Männern, Frauen). [2] http://langevo.blogspot.de/2014/09/four-map.html http://langevo.blogspot.de/2014/09/four-map.html
- philwelch 8y agoThe W is called "double-u" because it dates from the era when U and V were the same letter (the consonant and vowel versions diverged) and there was no W letter, but only a doubled-U. The phrase, "I want a veal sandwich on Tuesday" would have been spelled, "I uuant a ueal sanduuich on Tuesday" (or, alternatively, "I vvant a veal sandvvich on Tvesday"). This is also why u, v, and w are consecutive in the alphabet. This is similar to why the & character is called "ampersand"--it was originally considered a letter, and instead of the alphabet ending in "x, y, and z", it ended in "x, y, z, and per-se 'and'".
- flashman 8y agoThe historical use of u and v can be seen in the Lord's Prayer from 1538: > Our father whiche art in heuen, > halowed be thy name. > Let thy kyngdome cum vnto vs. > Thy wyll be fulfylled as well in erthe, > as it is in heuen. In the first line we see how U was used within words for both U and V ('our' and 'heaven'). In the third line we see how V was used for words starting with U (as well as words starting with V). Of course, this isn't universal, there are counter-examples of U used initially and V used medially!
- philwelch 8y agoYeah, compared to my contrived example, U and V were usually differentiated for typographical reasons and not perfectly interchangeable (kind of like the S and the "long S" that looks like a lowercase "f", e.g. in the phrase "Congrefs of the United States" in the original Bill of Rights). Another weird gray area between ligature and letter are the "æ" and "œ" characters, which are mainly used as ligatures for the British spellings of "foetus" and "encyclopaedia" but were, at some times, seen as actual letters. American spelling reforms erased this particular weirdness from our dialect.
- kpil 8y agoI liked the story of young web developer who suggested a new glyph for 'Th' since it was clearly missing, blizzfully unaware of the letter Thor that had been used in English until printing became available.
- kazinator 8y agoGrammatically 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, getting wet, or being sewn differently, or other such contexts.)
- xyzzyz 8y agoIt’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.
- V-2 8y ago"Kleszcze" may sound archaic, but it's technically a correct term (to denote a very specific type of tool). So DIY nerds wouldn't agree with you.
- Asooka 8y agoThat'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.
- kazinator 8y ago> kombinierki In Slovak, there is "kombinačky", which is shortening from "kombinované kliešte". Basically more or less the same item as as "combination pliers".
- smcl 8y ago
- dragonwriter 8y ago> 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.
- amaccuish 8y agoThis only goes so far back. I believe they actually came from German. Oxen in German is Ochsen German still actively uses the -en plural, and all nouns in the dative plural must use -n. So, Ochsen -> Oxen, Maenner -> Men (Slightly unrelated) So if you look at Scotland and Ireland, they've get some really interesting things in their dialects. die "Kirche" in German is a "church", in some dialects in scotland, it's a "kirker". Or in old dialects in Ireland, "children" is sometimes spoken as "childer". EDIT: I retract my theory on the relationship between children and kindern :)
- filmor 8y agoThe article explains that "children" is a fancified form of "childer" which matches the German "Kinder". The dative has nothing to do with this.
- amaccuish 8y agoI was referring to where the -n came from. After research it seems it came from the old case system, which originally came from german, not sure if it's the dative plural, was just a theory. Here's more about that: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-en#Etymology_2 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-en#Etymology_2
- azernik 8y agoRead the article; the -en in this particular case arose after the loss of the case system, in a hypercorrection during a period when -en and -s were the two main plural endings.
- ssijak 8y agoBecause 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
- wtetzner 8y agoEnglish 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.
- konart 8y ago> so many exceptions. You know nothing, Jonh Snow (seriously though, from a russian point of view English has very few of them)
- CrystalLangUser 8y agoThat is not in any shape or fashion how languages are made. Language will never be logical, because humans are not logical.
- sverige 8y agoMany years ago, one of my Russian professors said, "All languages are about 85% logical and 15% illogical. That's how you know humans made them." P.S. Russian is much easier to spell than English, but its verbs of motion are a real clusterfuck. P.P.S. I have met more than one Russian who said, "Only foreigners decline numbers correctly."
- gvx 8y agoIn Dutch, child/children is kind/kinderen, which is the same double plural. We also have that construction with ei/eieren for egg/eggs. (Regular plural suffixes are -en and -s.)
- personlurking 8y agoIn the chicken post, which they link to in the article in question, it says: "The OED notes versions in such Germanic languages as Dutch (kieken, kuiken)..." But chicken is kip in Dutch. Maybe they're talking about older versions of the word. Also interesting, perhaps, is the other '-en' that comes to mind: boy/boys, which is jongen/jongens
- cbcoutinho 8y agoIn dutch, you would say kippen for multiple chickens, and jongeren for young people/children (dare I say young'ens?)
- kmm 8y ago"kuiken" is Dutch for a chick, a young chicken (curious that in English, the form with the diminutive became the one used for the adult), whilst "kieken" is dialectical Dutch for "chicken". "kieken" and "kuiken" come from the same root, it's just that one of them got mutated by a sound change that never quite spread over the entire language. "jongen" is another story. It used to be "jonge", which is the substantivized version of the adjective "jong" (young). The -n was later added by analogy from the other cases. This is why the plural is pronounced "jonges" (written "jongens"), and the diminutive is "jongetje" even in the standard language.
- irishsultan 8y agoIn flemish kieken is used for kip.
- kmm 8y agoAnd quite in quite a few dialects you'd say "eiers" and "kinders", which is exactly the other kind of "double plural".
- 1ris 8y ago"childs" is, and always was uncommon, but seems to exists. Also saw it source code written by non-native speakers. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Children%2C+Childs https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Children%2C+Ch...
- politelemon 8y agoAppears even less - looking at the results, those slight bumps correspond to authors named Child, rather than its usage as plural.
- vinayan3 8y agoI have also seen in code in some examples of representing a graph. It looked pretty odd. https://github.com/search?q=%22childs%22&type=Code https://github.com/search?q=%22childs%22&type=Code
- NelsonMinar 8y agoI love all the replies here uninformed by reading the fine article.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoMakes me think of how Mädchen ("girl" or "maiden" in German) is neuter/neutral instead of feminine: https://blog.assarbad.net/20090810/das-madchen-why-is-it-grammatically-neutral/ https://blog.assarbad.net/20090810/das-madchen-why-is-it-gra...
- konschubert 8y agoBecause it is the diminutive form of "Maid" and thus neuter, as all diminutive forms in German.
- baxtr 8y agoSame with “Frauchen” (diminutive of “Frau” i.e. women) by the way...
- DoreenMichele 8y agoUnd auch Fräulein.
- baxtr 8y agoGnädige Frau :)
- ekianjo 8y agoThe article fails to explain why English moved from en to s for plural forms around 1400, though.
- empath75 8y agoIf you’re interested in that sort of minutia, there’s a History of English podcast that goes into it in mind numbing detail. The answer is that the -s plural is from the Vikings/Norse, and the -en plural is from the more complex system inherited from Anglo Saxon languages. English is like a creole or a pidgin language in a lot of ways and a lot of its features are due to various foreign invaders imposing their grammatical rules on the local vocabulary.
- phamilton 8y ago> The answer is that the -s plural is from the Vikings/Norse Which is interesting, because modern Swedish has an -n plural (among other plurals) and no -s plural. Compare ögon (eyes) and öron (ears) with their old english eyen and earen. I guess it would follow that Swedish had a lot of Angle Saxon influence in its evolution.
- empath75 8y agoIt’s actually more that the Old Norse and Old English had different endings and the Vikings didn’t bother to figure out the English system. I don’t think they know whether the -s is from a Norse ending or whether the Norse settled on -s for other reasons. The simplified version eventually spread because England was a mixture of various ethnicities for centuries and you’d have different variants of English from one town to the next— and after the Vikings you had the normans. I think it’s the equivalent of the guy I was eating with at a restaurant in Nicaragua who yelled to the waitress ‘honey, el forko por favor?’ Like, there was an attempt at Spanish.
- phamilton 8y ago> I don’t think they know whether the -s is from a Norse ending or whether the Norse settled on -s for other reasons I think you misunderstood... Modern Swedish doesn't have the -s ending at all for plurals. My point is that somehow that got lost.
- diehunde 8y agoIf you want to learn more about these curious facts about English I recommend reading "The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way".
- russellbeattie 8y agoHuh... I wonder if the the "eng" from England and English related to the Middle English englen and Old English englas for "angels"? Is England the land of angels? Edit: Ah, no. It's from the Angles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles
- mrec 8y agoAccording to the Venerable Bede, Pope Gregory I drew the same parallel in ~595: "Non Angli, sed angeli – They are not Angles, but angels. Well named, for they have angelic faces and ought to be co-heirs with the angels in heaven.". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I#Famous_quotes_and_anecdotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I#Famous_quotes_a...
- jpmattia 8y agoA bit OT, but there is a wonderful PBS/BBC series on the history of English on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XQx9pGGd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XQx9pGGd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG7REAOG1kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG7REAOG1kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cZR1EXGapc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cZR1EXGapc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kg63k5JDH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kg63k5JDH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqlVl0K9tw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqlVl0K9tw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVH6LdoEDNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVH6LdoEDNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJLDvP-N0zQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJLDvP-N0zQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej60L8xLLdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej60L8xLLdo
- kazinator 8y agoArticle misses the broader context. This is from the Germanic roots; existing Germanic languages still have this as a predominant pluralization pattern. German: auge (eye), augen (eyes).
- justinpombrio 8y agoThe 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: slurring long compound phrases together until they're effectively one word. A lot of conjugations/declentions are a result of this. I recommend this book if you're interested in how languages change over time; it's very well written. EDIT: Another fun fact is that words sometimes begin to mean their _exact opposite_. For example, "wicked" used to mean "evil", but in England (and elsewhere, but especially England) it's started to mean "sweet". And there's always the great consonant shift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law [1] https://www.amazon.com/Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary-Mankinds-Invention/dp/0805080120 https://www.amazon.com/Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary-Manki...
- LeoPanthera 8y agoI was amazed to discover that oranges used to be called "noranges" but "a norange" was corrupted into "an orange".
- cven714 8y agoSame with "a napron" -> "an apron"
- Double_a_92 8y agoAnd "a notter" -> "an otter"
- groovy2shoes 8y agoAnd "an ekename" -> "a nickname"
- KayEss 8y ago
- jameshart 8y agoFor the same reason it's Unixen, not Unices, of course.
- noobermin 8y agoI 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 to them (beef), while the English people who slaved in the fields raising the actual animals (cow) continued to use their ancestors' words for the live animals. This is why we have different words for the meat of the animals (beef, poultry, mutton) vs. the actual animals (cows, chicken, sheep).
- stevula 8y agoOld English had [a plural ending in S](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Nouns#Strong_Nouns 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.
- linkmotif 8y agoWould have to guess the Norsemen being referred to here at the people who came in the 800s and 900s, not the Normans who came later
- nvahalik 8y agoSo you mean to tell me that all those years of calling them "linux boxen" _actually_ wasn't crazy?
- cletus 8y agoThe evolution of language fascinates me. English has a fascinating history. 1000 years ago Old English and Althochdeutch (Old High German) were almost interchangeable (AFAIK). The really fascinating part was the period after 1066 for several centuries where English wasn't the court language of England. Now this period and lack of centralization is probably responsible for the many dialects (which now are mostly just different accents for other reasons). But the language changed so much over this period. Middle English is largely readable (but weird) to the modern reader. Old English is basically a different language. In this period English lost of what I like to call the bullshit like gender of (non-person) nouns. Case of nouns (other than pronouns) also basically disappeared. It still had the formal/informal distinction of the second person that so many other European languages had (but we lost that later). Verbs and nouns became way more regular. None of this happened with German (although Germany as a country didn't really exist until the 19th century and was at best a collection of city-states prior to that) but German in its various forms was still the ruling language (although Latin always had a certain preeminence what with the Holy Roman Empire and the Electors and all). Compare modern German grammar (where nouns and adjectives have to agree with case, number, gender and article). It strongly suggests that the ruling class seems to embody conservatism and traditions, which is unsurprising given that the status quo is pretty good if you're the ruling class. You see this in England where the precursor to modern French was the court language of England for hundreds of years. This has the effect of keeping commoners out (even more than they already are by virtue of hereditary title). It's almost like without central control English became more democratized. Obviously the printing press had a massive effect in standardizing spelling (other posters have mentioned that u and v were largely interchangeable). Radio (and later TV) had a massive effect on standardizing pronunciation. But still English has rapidly changed. One example I remember is if you go back and listen to early speeches by Churchill you'll here him say "nazi" not as "natsi" but as "nazzi" (much like the non-American ss in "aussie"). But by later in the war (IIRC) the "ts" phenom had pretty much been imported into English. Another thing I read was the mathematical model for how verbs become regular [1]. Basically, the less a verb is used, the sooner it becomes regular but how long it takes is quite predictable. Apparently "to wed" is the next verb to become regular. "To be" should take about 44,000 years. It makes you realize just how rapidly language changes and how grammar really is descriptive not prescriptive and why it's completely pointless to get your pedantic about "literally", less vs fewer, "very unique" and so on. [1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/09/29/the-evolution-of-the-past-tense-how-verbs-change-over-time/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/09/2...
- jammi 8y agoSo how about the plurals of some words ending with "us", like fungus-fungi, but virus-viruses-not-virii and how about dingus-dingii-or-dinguses, doofus-doofii-or-doofuses and so forth?
- s3m4j 8y agoBad understanding and appropriation of latin and greek to seem smarter than one really is.
- smcl 8y ago"... and the archaic eyen come from." - weirdly this isn't so archaic in the corner of Scotland I'm from. In our dialect we have "een" (which confusingly has a homonym "een" for "one"). Example usage: Ma cowkin made ma een waater Explanation of that and more fun words and phrases here: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13140464.Word_up__20_of_the_best_Doric_terms/ http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13140464.Word_up__20_of_t...
- ebzzry 8y agoThat is one of the reasons why I support Esperanto.
- dctoedt 8y agoIt'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.
- V-2 8y ago> 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 :)
- dctoedt 8y ago> 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. GP here. You and @maginary make an interesting point, namely that standardized spelling helps non-native speakers. The problem with English is that much of our existing standardized spelling is quite non-intuitive to pronounce, e.g., rough, through, thorough. Perhaps some kind of spelling reform as discussed by @philipps and @jherdman below would help, although other comments here also discuss the problems that have arisen with such efforts.
- konart 8y agoIn 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 generalisation of a group of young people (both boys and girls). PS: at the same time you can actually invent a plural for "ребенок" if you want to, but it may be considered as something similar to cockney, but used on purpose in otherwise normal speech.
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- dennisgorelik 8y ago> "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".
- konart 8y agothis is what I've wrote
- Markoff 8y agopff, 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