Perplexing Plurals: Difference between revisions
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Part of what you know when you know a language is how to make your words fit into a grammatical system. This can be fairly simple, as in English (the odd -s here, the odd -ed there) or fairly complex, as in the Russian case system. One thing all systems have in common though, is that they work all the time. For every singular, there is a plural.<ref> This is, of course, not true. Even in languages with a straightforward singular/plural distinction, there are always things like [ |
Part of what you know when you know a language is how to make your words fit into a grammatical system. This can be fairly simple, as in English (the odd -s here, the odd -ed there) or fairly complex, as in the Russian case system. One thing all systems have in common though, is that they work all the time. For every singular, there is a plural.<ref> This is, of course, not true. Even in languages with a straightforward singular/plural distinction, there are always things like [[wikipedia:Plurale tantum|"scissors" or "pants"]], or [[wikipedia:Mass noun|"stuff"]])</ref> It might be regular (trope, tropes) or irregular (goose, geese), but you know it's there and you know what it is. |
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...until you find yourself needing to talk about octopuses...octopus...octopi- no, [[Dog Latin|that's Latin]]...octopodes? Ugh, now this is going to bother me all day. |
...until you find yourself needing to talk about octopuses...octopus...octopi- no, [[Dog Latin|that's Latin]]...octopodes? Ugh, now this is going to bother me all day. |
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Note: This is crucially not a trope used by [[Funny Foreigner|Funny Foreigners]]. It is confusion about a speaker's '''own language''' (and the need to stop and work it out) and usually not caused by ignorance or [[Book Dumb]] (although expect a character beset by [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]] to be immune). |
Note: This is crucially not a trope used by [[Funny Foreigner|Funny Foreigners]]. It is confusion about a speaker's '''own language''' (and the need to stop and work it out) and usually not caused by ignorance or [[Book Dumb]] (although expect a character beset by [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]] to be immune). |
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{{examples |
{{examples}} |
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== Fan Works == |
== Fan Works == |
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[[Category:Dialogue]] |
[[Category:Dialogue]] |
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[[Category:Perplexing Plurals]] |
[[Category:Perplexing Plurals]] |
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[[Category:Pages with comment tags]] |
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