The Browns have one child; the Smiths have two children. Ah, that one is weird. This is an example of an irregular plural form. These nouns are still called variable nouns, they are just irregular. There are only a few hundred nouns like this, but they are the most interesting.

There are some nouns that are more ambiguous. Take wheat versus oats, for example. Wheat seems singular, but you could talk about a wheat field – many wheat plants – and that seems to be plural, no? Or what about oats? Oats is a plural, but it seems to be used interchangeably with the word wheat.

Here are some irregular patterns (oxymoron!):

• Adding -en to the end of a noun to make it plural. Child, children; ox, oxen; brother, brethren (this can also be brothers). This is a remnant from Old English; <-n> used to be a case marker for plural. Chaucer used daughtren for daughters.
• Changing the vowel in the middle of the word. Man, men; woman, women; foot, feet; goose, geese; tooth, teeth; louse, lice; mouse, mice. This is called mutation or umlaut. More on this in a later post.
• Changing <f> to <v> and adding an -es or -s. Calf, calves; elf, elves; half, halves; hoof, hooves; knife, knives; leaf, leaves; life, lives; loaf, loaves; scarf, scarves; self, selves; shelf, shelves; wharf, wharves; wife, wives; wolf, wolves. Some of these are starting to become regular, though: scarfs, leafs, wharfs, etc… are becoming more and more popular. I’m not sure why this happens.
• Just plain weird.  Cow, kine (more commonly cows); die, dice.

And here is a fun spelling poem I found. I’m not sure who it’s by, but I wish I had written it!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!

I thought it was enjoyable.

Check out all my Words of the Day posts HERE.

Etymologies:

• Avocado: (noun. A pear-shaped fruit with a rough leathery skin, smooth oily flesh, and a large stone.) The Aztecs first called this fruit the ahucatl (testicle). It was called this either because of a physical resemblance, or because they thought it was an aphrodisiac. The Spanish misheard the word as avocado, and brought the fruit along with the incorrect name back to Europe.
• Big: (noun. Of considerable size.) This one is weird… it’s such a common word, but the origin is actually still unknown!
• Dog: (noun. The pet.) Like big, dog also has no clear origin. It appeared in Old English (OE) as docga, replacing OE hund. Most other Indo-European languages have words similar to hund (=> hound) or chien (French), but one can find how dog arrived. The Spanish word for dog (perro) also appeared without a clear origin.

Vocabulary:

• Anachronism: noun. Something located in a time when it couldn’t have existed or occurred. “Everything looked just as it would have in 1776… except for one anachronism, the bright red fire truck.”
• Diaphanous: adjective. Light, delicate, or translucent. “The girl drew the diaphanous veil over her face.”
• Polemical: adjective. Of or involving dispute or controversy. “The polemical essay caused quite a stir in the academic community.”

Have a great weekend!

Throughout history, it was been in fashion to borrow aspects of language and culture from other admired countries. In Renaissance times, it because modish to borrow Latin spellings for otherwise perfectly normal words. A good example of this is the word DEBT. Debt used to be spelled dette, but the <b> was added to match the Latin word debitum.

Another example is the word DOUBT. Doubt was a loan-word (borrowed) from French (douter), but was given new spelling based on the Latin dubitare.

This convention is called Etymological Spelling. It’s a system of spelling that relies on a traditional spelling rules, and not on pronunciation or changes in pronunciation. Some other words that were etymologically spelled are indict (Latin indictare), receipt (Latin recepta), subtle (Latin subtilis), and victuals (Latin victualia; still pronounced vittles).

Sometimes when the spelling was changed, the pronunciation changed as well. For example, throne used to be pronounced and spelled trone… but when Latin spelling was reintroduced, an <h> was added after the <t> and the pronunciation changed. A word that was respelled this way (<th>) but retained its pronunciation was the word thyme. Another word that this happened to is cognizance. Cognizance used to be spelled and pronounced conysance… but again, the spelling changed to match the Latin word (cognoscere = to recognize) and subsequently the pronunciation changed.

Another example of this change in spelling and pronunciation is fault. It is borrowed from French (faute) but then respelled with an <l> based on the Latin words falsus and fallere. A similar thing happened with the English words assault and vault.

Even the word bankrupt fell victim to this practice. Originally the <p> was silent, as in Italian banca rotta (“broken bank”). The word was respelled based on the Latin rupta, and the <p> became pronounced. Baptism used to be bapteme (from French), but an <s> was added to match the Latin baptismus.

We don’t know why some words retained their old pronunciation and some didn’t. It’s just another mystery of language.

Are there any words that you think have nonsensical spelling? Maybe they’re spelled that way because of this phenomenon.

(As an aside – in Old English the “k” was actually written as a “c” – knight was cniht, etc… There was a change in spelling due to the influence of Norman French spelling… but that is a discussion for a later date.)

(Another aside – some Scots still pronounce the silent “g” and “k” in these words. It’s a nasal-ish sound in their pronunciation.)

This happened with other consonant clusters as well. Some examples are: gn, hl, hn, hr, and hw. The “gn” remains in our current spellings (gnome, gnarled, gnash), but the others (hl – hlud = loud, hn – hnutu = nut, hr – hring = ring, hw – hwenne = when) have disappeared.

At this point it would be difficult to get rid of the “k” – how would we differentiate between (k)now and now? Would we pronounce them the same? Would we pronounce them differently but spell them the same? And what about (k)night and night? Those have the same pronunciation, and would even have the same spelling if we dropped the “k”. This could cause quite a confusion in phrases like, “it’s my lucky night!” What do you mean – man in shining armor, or hours of darkness?

It’s still a mystery exactly why this change happened. The most likely cause is that a few people began mispronouncing the word and the blunder spread, eventually replacing the original manner of speaking. Another hypothesis is that it’s the result of foreign influences. England was expanding its sovereignty around this time (16th-17th centuries) and encountering many new languages which it began to assimilate.

Other Germanic languages like German, Swedish, and Dutch kept the “k” and they still pronounce it. It’s hard to say why English speakers decided that the “k-n” sound was too difficult. Just another mystery of language.

I’m always open to questions if you want an explanation of an English (or other language) idiosyncrasy. I will also resume the discussion of the language and thought connection in the near future. Until then, happy speaking/reading/writing.