Perplexing Plurals: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

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.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In ''[[Good Omens]]'', Shadwell's instructions to Newt are to search for:

2. Unexplainable Phenomenons. Phenomenatrices. Phenomenice. Things, ye ken well what I mean. }}

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

== [[Music]] ==

* Used in the [[Novelty Song]] "I Want a Hippopotomus for Christmas."

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** ...[[Completely Missing the Point|Bad news]]?

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* Nobody in the ''[[Free Space]]'' fandom is sure what the plural of "Sathanas" is supposed to be (given that it's an ancient name for [[Satan]], it probably doesn't have one). The game itself avoids the issue by always referring to that ship class as a "Sathanas juggernaut".

 

* In the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "Greece Lightning", the narrator of an educational filmstrip is unsure how to refer to [[Everythings Better With Platypus|platypi]]. Platypuses. Platypeople?

 

* Some Russian jokes deal with the unpredictable nature of Russian plural nouns. An example from [[Wikipedia]]:

{{quote|The genitive plural of a noun (used with a numeral to indicate five or more of something, as opposed to the dual, used for two, three, or four, see Russian nouns) is a rather unpredictable form of the Russian noun, and there are a handful of words which even native speakers have trouble producing this form of (either due to rarity or an actual lexical gap). A common example of this is kocherga (fireplace poker). The joke is set in a Soviet factory. Five pokers are to be requisitioned. The correct forms are acquired, but as they are being filled out, a debate arises: what is the genitive plural of kocherga? Is it Kocherg? Kocherieg? Kochergov?... One thing is clear: a form with the wrong genitive plural of kocherga will bring disaster from the typically-pedantic bureaucrats. Finally, an old janitor overhears the commotion, and tells them to send in two separate requisitions: one for two kochergi and another for three kochergi. In some versions, they send in a request for 4 kochergi and one extra to find out the correct word, only to receive back "here are your 4 kochergi and one extra."}}

** Richard Lederer's "[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2573/is_4_29/ai_n29150810/ Foxen in the Henhice]" is based around the same concept.

* There's a joke about someone shipping a pair of mongooses to a zoo and being unsure of what the plural of "mongoose" is. They start out writing a note referring them to "mongooses", then try "mongeese", and eventually resort to writing "Enclosed is the mongoose you ordered. Also enclosed is the other mongoose you ordered".

 

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[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:Perplexing Plurals]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]