Waiting for Lunchtime

A rant about language

Someone recently asked on a mailing list I'm on: "What is the plural of doofus?". All kinds of weird and wacky answers were suggested, and that's what I want to complain about.

Modern English is really one of the simplest languages when it comes to pluralising words, you simply add a -s suffix (or if the word already ends in a sibilant, add -es). It really is as simple as that, so the plural of doofus is doofuses.

OK, I know there are the obvious exceptions to the above -s rule, this are predominately old Germanic words whose use in the language not only predates the introduction of medieval French 1000 years ago, but which were common enough that the irregular plurals didn't fade away. Examples would be child/children, man/men, sheep/sheep.

But in general, pluralisation is simple in English. All this nonsense about treating nouns ending in -us differently is generally just that -- nonsense. English isn't Latin, and has never been Latin, so there is absolutely no reason at all to assume that Latin declinations should apply to English words, even if the words themselves are derived from Latin sources. For a good exmple, see this article on the plural of the word "virus".

I blame the Victorians.

For some reason best known to themselves, early Victorian gramatticists decided that the only "pure" language was Latin, and everything else now spoken wer merely degenerate cases of that language. Hence their coming up with completely arbitrary rules such as "never split an infinitive". Why not? You can't split an infinitive in Latin, as it is only one word. But in English it's often far more natural to put an adverb into an infinitive. So if that's how the language flows, do it!

The same Victorian belief on Latin purity is what produces the confusion about English words ending in -us. Because they bear a superficial resemblence to many common Latin nouns it was decided that in many cases they ought to decline as if they were Latin nouns. But they're not! Latin's influence on English is very remote, having spent 500 or so years evolving into Norman French before getting amalgamated with Germanic Anglo-Saxon in the 11th and 12th centuries.

I repeat: there is no reason at all why Latin grammar rules should be applied to English.

posted by Iain @ 09:49