Re: About linguistic (in)tolerance

On 3-25-99 Nik T. wrote: "And it wasn't always London, either.  IIRC, it
was once in Canterbury. If it had remained there, the standard plural would
probably be -en, thus "housen"."

And shoen for shoes, which I say at home for some inexplicable reason. And
sometimes "waspen" for wasps, because the latter is harder to say.

"Of course, many unremarkable words are from misanalyzed forms, like
"cherry", which was originally "cherries", but that was misanalyzed as a
plural, and the assumed singular "cherry" was created."

And pease, plural peases, became pea, plural peas. Hence 'pease porridge
hot ..." I think I like pease better ...

"There is a correct form [of English], but it's not taught in school.  A
person using English as a second language can make mistakes, because
they're importing features of their L1 into English, or other reasons, but
NATIVE speakers don't speak "incorrectly", most of the time."

I'm glad someone is following my point. I'm not arguing that languages
don't have infinite possibilities, but in real life they are limited by
necessity to certain preferred forms. These forms can and do change over
time through new usage.

BB

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