Hello, writing again (always) and I’ve got a sort of invented word that ends in ‘kop’ which I think is Dutch for ‘head.’
The word is singluar for individuals, and I need to know how it would be pluralized properly for speaking of a group:
-kopen or -koppen? (Or neither…)
Thank you!
“Koppen”. Frequently seen in the idiomatic term “kinderkoppen”, lit. “children’s heads”, for cobblestone streets (which, I hasten to add, are not actually made out of children’s heads in the Netherlands). :eek:
See here for a good discussion of why some Dutch words double a final consonant for pluralization. Short answer: because otherwise the word would get mixed up with, say, the plural form of a different word that has a long vowel.
For instance, “kopen” with one “p” is the infinitive form of a verb meaning “to buy”, with a long “o”.
Thank you so much!
Similarly in English, when adding any suffix to a word, if the base word ends with a consonant and the suffix begins with a vowel, the consonant at the end of the base word will sometimes be doubled. The rules are largely to maintain the desired pronunciation – keeping a “short” vowel short before that final consonant, or keeping the stress on the right syllable.
Something very similar happens in Hebrew too, BTW, but they have a different spelling rule to deal with it: A syllable can end with a consonant, and adding a suffix to a word can cause the written word to incorrectly indicate the correct pronunciation; but doubling the final consonant can fix this.
But there was a problem with doubling a consonant that way in Hebrew: It is the language of the Old Testament, which was considered so sacred that not a single letter could be changed. When the Masoretes introduced their writing system between the 5th and 10th centuries CE, they added a dot inside such a consonant, indicating that is should be treated as if doubled. In essence, a dot inside a letter, in this context, means that the letter is simultaneously the last letter of a syllable and the first letter of the following syllable.