The recent tread about oxen made me want to post about an issue I had recently listening to a podcast that involved those magnificent beasts the aurochs. Unfortunately the podcasters failed to realize “ochs” here is just German for ox, and kept talking about “the auroch”. This went on for so long I eventually decided the best thing I could do was to accept “ock” as the singular for “ox”.
And in a completely different vein:
Norwegian has well established “hyperfrenched” pronunciations of loan words from French. Pommes frittes are pom free, Bearnaise is bearnay, entrecote is entrecaw. (Extremely simplified translitteration of Norwegian pronunciations.) This allows for a lot of friction between the various combinations of people who do or don’t pronounce it these ways and who do or do not enjoy dying on prescriptivist hills.
There are certainly fake singular nouns constructed by mistaken back-formation from the same or a different language. I am sure people will be along to think of some good examples; things along the lines of “chupacabra” or “pea”.
Or are you asking whether it is more pretentious to try (and fail!) to A-ify a word borrowed from language B, let us say French, or pronounce it as in French? I think the former sounds worse, but maybe you can find a way of saying “sauce from Béarn” or “fried potatoes” in “pure” Norwegian?
Gyro for gyros comes to mind. Gyros is already singular. Much rarer, I’ve heard the singular kudo for kudos. Happens the other way, too. Pierogi is already plural, but used as the singular in English. Blini is also already plural from blin.
The English word “children” is already multiply-pluralized: “childer” was a plural of “child”, and then that got further pluralized with the then-typical -en ending. And it might happen again: “childrens” is common in some dialects.
I’ve heard the “pea” thing before, but my mind cannot hold on to it. It just doesn’t make sense.
And I had no idea “Chupacabra” was a misunderstood singular! Neat!
I’m not really asking anything. Just stating a fact about Norwegian pronunciation of those words. Most of the people “mispronouncing” them aren’t trying to be pretentious, it’s just the pronunciation they’ve learned. I think the best argument against it, though even that is a weak one, is that it primes you to have an even harder time learning French than being a Norwegian speaker already does.
In another thread I mentioned that the generic word for types of cattle was beeve. It came from beeves, which was the plural of beef. Over time, however, people forgot that origin and backformed the singular into beeve.
I am reminded of the linguistics text Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head & Other Drawings, in which it was claimed that the singular of fence was fent.
a poem I remember from my childhood uses this property
A piece of cheese no bigger than a die
can bait the trap for a wandering mie.
ETA: Found the original quote it turns out its from the devil’s dictionary
“Die, n. The singular of ‘dice.’ We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, ‘Never say die.’ At long intervals, however, some one says: ‘The die is cast,’ which is not true, for it is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet and domestic economist, Senator Depew:
‘A cube of cheese no larger than a die
May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.’”
Just a stylistic request, but it would be a lot easier to read these numbers quickly if they used the customary commas, viz., “$2,000,000,” or hybrid form: “$2 million.”
Cannon is the one that irritates me. Like sheep, cannon is both singular and plural so, just as we don’t have flocks of sheeps, we don’t have batteries of cannons.
> Cannon to right of them, > Cannon to left of them, > Cannon in front of them > Volleyed and thundered; > Stormed at with shot and shell, > Boldly they rode and well, > Into the jaws of Death, > Into the mouth of hell > Rode the six hundred.
Tennyson aside “cannons” appears to have been in parallel use as a plural for the last two hundred years at least. Whence your conviction that it’s not valid?
