kinda bullshit that English is the only language that gives a fuck about words origins and forces original grammar… but somehow only for European sourced words.
Why don’t we use Arabic plurals with Arabic words?
no one says One chemist, two chemistayim, three chemistim. I have a free guitars guitarat.
Why not Japanese plurals for Japanese words? many emoji are still spelled the same as one emoji.
We’re barely smart enough to get what we’ve got right. Half of our population can’t remember how punctuation works. Hell half of our population still thinks that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
Modern English picks and chooses to be sure (see, for example: octopodes (correctly conforms), octopi (overcorrection), octopuses (arguably most common)), but to say English only considers this for words of European origin is obviously bullshit. If I said “I have two bok choys on my cutting board”, most English speakers who regularly use that noun would think it sounds wrong; it sounds wrong because it never got pluralized, and it’s of Chinese origin where there aren’t really plurals. On the other hand, most people wouldn’t take issue with you saying “I’ve got two ketchups” in reference to different bottles or types of ketchup – despite again being of Chinese origin and not having an original plural.
I don’t understand why you’re taking an argument about prescriptivism and descriptivism and turning it into a weird, easily debunkable argument about Eurocentrism.
Languages where English respects the source grammar
You’re saying “English” as if it’s a singular entity, which is obviously absurd.
I don’t know how you didn’t understand, but I showed how two Chinese loanwords used in English – bok choy and ketchup – respectively do and do not generally have their original grammar respected. I likewise used the plural of “octopus” (incidentally with a ‘c’ instead of a ‘k’ like it “should” have) to show that a word of Greek origin has varying degrees of respect for its roots (but that it’s generally disrespected by most people).
The point being that it’s a mixed bag. You can cherrypick European and non-European words that do and do not have their original pluralization generally respected by modern English speakers, just like you’ve done here, to make whatever kind of argument you want. And why are you thowing proper nouns in here? Yeah, Americans kept the name “Los Angeles”. Okay? Is that why it’s called “New York City” and not “Nieuw Amsterdam” right now? Is that why Americans pronounce the name of the country on their southern border as “Meksiko?”
It’s very clear you’re making this argument based on vibes, because absolutism clearly doesn’t work, and any attempt to make this argument about Eurocentrism via actual statistical means requires extensive knowledge that you plainly don’t have when you’re making basic-ass oversights like this.
(The singular of ‘algae’ is ‘alga’, you absolute philistine.)
kinda bullshit that English is the only language that gives a fuck about words origins and forces original grammar… but somehow only for European sourced words.
Why don’t we use Arabic plurals with Arabic words? no one says One chemist, two chemistayim, three chemistim. I have a free
guitarsguitarat.Why not Japanese plurals for Japanese words? many emoji are still spelled the same as one emoji.
African words? one zombie, many minzombi?
…
We’re barely smart enough to get what we’ve got right. Half of our population can’t remember how punctuation works. Hell half of our population still thinks that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
then why don’t we do like every other language and use English grammar on loanwords?
I honestly think English is the only language that uses the loanword source grammar, and it’s very inconsistent.
Modern English picks and chooses to be sure (see, for example: octopodes (correctly conforms), octopi (overcorrection), octopuses (arguably most common)), but to say English only considers this for words of European origin is obviously bullshit. If I said “I have two bok choys on my cutting board”, most English speakers who regularly use that noun would think it sounds wrong; it sounds wrong because it never got pluralized, and it’s of Chinese origin where there aren’t really plurals. On the other hand, most people wouldn’t take issue with you saying “I’ve got two ketchups” in reference to different bottles or types of ketchup – despite again being of Chinese origin and not having an original plural.
I don’t understand why you’re taking an argument about prescriptivism and descriptivism and turning it into a weird, easily debunkable argument about Eurocentrism.
I don’t understand you, you seem to disagree, but you didn’t provide any examples, besides adding examples to my case.
Languages where English respects the source grammar: Spanish (Tacos, Los Angeles), French, Italian, German, Latin, Greek… All European.
And the list of loanwords languages that English ignores source grammar? all non Europeans.
find me a few counter examples to disprove my observations.
Here’s an entire phrase which respects Chinese grammar: 好久不见 - “long time no see”
expression from immigrant communities is NOT the same as a loan word.
You’re saying “English” as if it’s a singular entity, which is obviously absurd.
I don’t know how you didn’t understand, but I showed how two Chinese loanwords used in English – bok choy and ketchup – respectively do and do not generally have their original grammar respected. I likewise used the plural of “octopus” (incidentally with a ‘c’ instead of a ‘k’ like it “should” have) to show that a word of Greek origin has varying degrees of respect for its roots (but that it’s generally disrespected by most people).
The point being that it’s a mixed bag. You can cherrypick European and non-European words that do and do not have their original pluralization generally respected by modern English speakers, just like you’ve done here, to make whatever kind of argument you want. And why are you thowing proper nouns in here? Yeah, Americans kept the name “Los Angeles”. Okay? Is that why it’s called “New York City” and not “Nieuw Amsterdam” right now? Is that why Americans pronounce the name of the country on their southern border as “Meksiko?”
It’s very clear you’re making this argument based on vibes, because absolutism clearly doesn’t work, and any attempt to make this argument about Eurocentrism via actual statistical means requires extensive knowledge that you plainly don’t have when you’re making basic-ass oversights like this.
it’s not an academic essay, I wrote that a couple minutes after realising that.
but I don’t think you disproved anything with any of your examples, it just seemed like you didn’t enjoy the decolonising language used.
Algaeez
Algaeez nutz