Re: OT: Realism? Re: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT

David Peterson scripsit:

> My language pluralizes nouns by changing a singular noun to its
> corresponding singular noun in Finnish" (hee, hee...   *That* would
> be fun: A language that depends on extensive knowledge of another,
> totally different language in order to be spoken).
Oddly enough, English is already like this!  We have a large and, more
to the point, *open-ended* set of nouns for which we make the plural
by using the corresponding plural noun in Latin or Greek.  When we
borrow a word from any other language, it typically arrives in the
singular only and gets a regular plural in -s (or -es), or sometimes
it arrives in the plural as a mass noun (e.g. "spaghetti"), but
when we borrow a Latin or Greek singular noun, we basically borrow
the plural noun along with it.  We don't do this for any other
part of speech, though.  (Sometimes the borrowed plural gets replaced
by a regular one, or partly so:  biologists speak of antennae, but
radio engineers of antennas.)

--
John Cowan        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan          jcowan@reutershealth.com
Please leave your values                Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.                      check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel                   --Cordelia Vorkosigan