Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 August 24

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August 24

Plural of walrus?

Can anyone explain, given that hippopotami, rhinoceri and platypi are correct, that "walri" isn't the correct plural for "walrus". 146.200.107.107 (talk) 03:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

because it's not a Greek or Latin word, it's Germanic. Rhinoceri isn't correct either; the plural of -ceros isn't -ceri. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 03:57, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The -rus is from ros, from hors, meaning "horse", like hippo in hippopotamus. The inexplicable thing is why we think any Greek or Latin plurals are "correct" in English. It makes some amount of sense while the words are new additions and clearly foreign, but by the time these animal names start appearing on wall charts that teach the alphabet, it's bizarre that they should be haunted by scraps of foreign (and ancient) grammar. But then again I guess we're accustomed to a lot of irregular verbs from Sanskrit (swam, sang) and irregular vowels (ei) and silent letters (h) from French, so whatever, make the best of it.  Card Zero  (talk) 04:19, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Zooming out, I suppose the Greco-Roman morphological loans have been part of English in some proportion ever since it started taking itself seriously as a literary language—so I don't see why we shouldn't treat them as part of English. It's fun to use them, it's fun to use them "wrong", and it's fun to say "really, they should be called octopodes." Fun for the whole family. That's the attitude most in vogue when we're talking the composite nature of other languages, so why not our own as well? Many misapplications from Latin or Greek that simply don't fit into English (e.g. the old proscription on splitting infinitives stemming from Latin not having multi-word infinitives to split) have basically been discarded, so all's well that ends well. Also, we should adopt the Anglo-Saxon / Norse / northern Middle English -en as a productive suffix for plural verbs again... Remsense ‥ 论 05:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I wish there was a good plural for axis. I don't like that axes looks like the plural of axe, and nobody likes it when I use axises. Oh, Wiktionary is now offering axiis (edited in last year by user Binarystep, thanks for that). Maybe I can stomach that one.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

See, this is perfect—plural of ax(e) can be axen, leaving axes for axis. Remsense ‥ 论 06:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

*Axen is appealing, but it suggests "made out of axe", like flaxen. (However, see boxen for relatively recent plural production).  Card Zero  (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

But I don't see the problem! It's true! Remsense ‥ 论 06:23, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Look at all the different jobs English -en does. Taken, wooden, vixen, quicken, chicken, thinken ... Maybe this one suffix is all the grammar we really need.  Card Zero  (talk) 06:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

146.200.107.107 -- It's rather odd that two out of three forms you gave, "rhinoceri" and "platypi", are arguably not correct. AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Platypi is definitely not correct, although dictionaries have no choice but recognise it gets used regardless. From Wiktionary: The plural form platypodes is formed by application of the Greek (the language from which platypus derives) rules of forming plurals, precedented by the similarly formed plurals podes and octopodes (plurals of pous and octopus, respectively). However, being a fairly novel plural form, it is seldom used; the plurals platypuses, platypus, or, more rarely, platypi are more common. The plural form platypi is used sometimes under the impression that platypus is a masculine Latin second declension noun. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:00, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Ignorami strike again.  --Lambiam 23:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Card_Zero -- Germanic strong verbs do not come from Sanskrit, but continue early Indo-European ablaut (originally e/o/zero alternations -- Indo-European "e" and "o" merged in Sanskrit). AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I picked up from somewhere that they come from Vedic chant. I'm afraid that I'm liable to go on repeating that until I investigate it in a way that sticks. You're saying Sanskrit had a smaller range of conjugations, corresponding to only swim and swum without swam?  Card Zero  (talk) 08:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

There's the title swami, which supposedly could have confused someone, but it's not related to "swam". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:21, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Then there's this hypothesis, mostly among Indian nationalists, that Sanskrit is - for all important details - identical to the Proto-Indo-European mother language, but it's generally discarded outside of these circles. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:27, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The article does mention Sanskrit grammarians at the start of the first section, "history of the concept", so it's probably one of those popularizing-versus-inventing things.  Card Zero  (talk) 10:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Sanskrit had complex verb conjugations, more so than any attested Germanic language, but it did not preserve Indo-European e/o ablaut, due to the well-known sound change of "e" and "o" merging with "a". Just look at Schleicher's fable, where Schleicher's original 1868 version, heavily influenced by Sanskrit, doesn't have "e" or "o", but these exist in all versions produced by later scholars, after linguists realized that Sanskrit wasn't as close to Proto-Indo-European as Schleicher thought it was. AnonMoos (talk) 17:29, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

By the way, the non-present forms of the Germanic strong verb represent a conflation of the earlier Indo-European aorist and the Indo-European perfect. Strong verbs as such don't exist outside the Germanic languages (though the Latin perfect is a separate and independent conflation of the IE aorist and perfect), Sanskrit still has separate and distinct aorist and perfect forms (as does ancient Greek)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, another Classical word which causes problems is "Ignoramus". This is a verb in Latin, and the 1st person plural "-mus" ending here has nothing to do with the 2nd-declension masculine nominative singular "-us" ending. And it's not too clear what the plural of "virus" even would have been in ancient Latin. Whenever the classical plural form is in doubt or would sound odd, the remedy is to apply ordinary English "-(e)s"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Remsense -- The modern English system actually gets a lot of use out of its relatively minimal inflection. The third-person singular present "-s" ending distinguishes finite indicative verbs from infinitives in the most common person-number combination, and also distinguishes singular from plural in the third person. In a few cases, it can even distinguish indicative from non-indicative ("I insist that he leave the room"), though not always applied by all speakers. You can look at modern German verb and noun inflections if you're nostalgic about "-en" endings, but I find them rather cumbersome. Dutch has "-en" endings in the written language, but the "n" is usually not pronounced in the spoken language (which is similar to middle English before deletion of word-final schwas). AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Certainly! One of the big things that initially attracted me to Chinese was its almost total lack of inflectional morphology—I like the little ways in which Chinese is closer to English than to other European languages.Remsense ‥ 论 04:41, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

pronunciation of element 107 in Polish

According to English Wiktionary, bohr (bohrium) and bor (boron) are homophones in Polish. But can it really be so, for two words in the same field? This link seems to suggest that they are not supposed to be homophones after all, assuming my Polish hasn't gone totally rusty through disuse. :) Double sharp (talk) 11:56, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The Polish Wiktionary seems to indicate bohr has an ach-laut for the h. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that accords with what I thought the page I linked to said. I've updated the English Wiktionary entry. Double sharp (talk) 15:39, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

You might have missed the [r̥], which I guess differs from [r]. I didn't understand how to edit it. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:21, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Just a possible allophone of /r/ after voiceless consonants, per Polish phonology#Allophones (which gives wiatr as an example). Double sharp (talk) 04:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

According to the Polish Wikipedia article, "the Nomenclature Commission of the Polish Chemical Society recommends pronouncing the 'h' in the word 'bohr' in order to distinguish it from 'bor'." In modern Polish, the letter <h> is pronounced as /x/, which means that "bohr" should be pronounced /bɔxr/, rhyming with "ochr". — Kpalion^(talk) 07:44, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! After I made the change on English Wiktionary, some further changes were made by others, so that it now gives both the pronunciation with /x/ and the one without it (the sound file provided lacks the /x/). Double sharp (talk) 05:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)