I found out something new yesterday!
May. 4th, 2012 10:17 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyApparently some languages (or at least one language, and that's Welsh) have a separate marker for some singular objects. That is, some nouns have the plural as their default and the singular is a suffix.
Isn't that cool?
Wikipedia compares this to English mass nouns, which reminds me. A while back I was checking up the etymology of asparagus and I found this whole discussion on what the plural of asparagus is. Sadly, I could not join in, because I wanted so much to point out that it doesn't have a plural, it's not a count noun. But that answer raises so many new questions, mostly "Why the heck can't you count asparagus?" It's not like water or air or even rice and sand. It's asparagus, so why can't I go "one asparagus, two asparaguses, three asparagi, four!" like potatoes? Or maybe other people can do that, but I find myself referring exclusively to bites or stalks or bunches of the stuff instead.
And for that matter, why broccoli? I can't have one broccoli, but I can have one head or stalk or bowl of broccoli. I can count cabbages but not broccoli? Something is broken in the English language here, guys!
Isn't that cool?
Wikipedia compares this to English mass nouns, which reminds me. A while back I was checking up the etymology of asparagus and I found this whole discussion on what the plural of asparagus is. Sadly, I could not join in, because I wanted so much to point out that it doesn't have a plural, it's not a count noun. But that answer raises so many new questions, mostly "Why the heck can't you count asparagus?" It's not like water or air or even rice and sand. It's asparagus, so why can't I go "one asparagus, two asparaguses, three asparagi, four!" like potatoes? Or maybe other people can do that, but I find myself referring exclusively to bites or stalks or bunches of the stuff instead.
And for that matter, why broccoli? I can't have one broccoli, but I can have one head or stalk or bowl of broccoli. I can count cabbages but not broccoli? Something is broken in the English language here, guys!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-28 04:21 pm (UTC)I don't think English has a dual case like that, but it would be cool. (Russian and Greek do, I think!)
I don't know about broccoli, but I know that in Italian ravioli is a plural, so you can have one raviolo, and lots of ravioli. Lasagne is a plural (of presumably lasagna?). Broccoli might be like that, too. (One broccolo? Broccolus? Broccol?)
Having singular be marked and plural the default is indeed cool! I had no idea.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-28 05:35 pm (UTC)And yes, I really want one. Occasionally I rewrite English in my head and when I do I cut the plural in half, one for a small plural and one for a large plural. We DO have two existing plural markers anyway, I'd just repurpose the largely defunct -en for one of them.
I also add a fourth person, because, dude, how cool is that?