Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)

Re:Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) by amaccuish on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:32PM (#17168962)

In other languages, there is a number (dual) that deals with cases like this. It's been dropping from most languages where it's used. In Russian it's mostly gone, but alot of the endings remain.

Also lot's of languages when borrowing from English do away with the plural if it's obvious. Like in french, a pair of jeans is just un jean, singular.

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Re:Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) by SilasX on Sunday May 27, 2018 @06:10PM (#17169371)

English has some vestiges of the grammatical dual, in terms of having a special word for the case of two: both vs all, either vs any, neither vs none. (And for real pedants, between vs among.)

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Re:Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) by gizmo686 on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:49PM (#17169024)

Dual doesn't really help in this case. In a dual system, we would have something like:

1 pant

2 pantx

3+ pants

The problem with the words op is describing is that they should, semantically, belong to the category of 1 object, but morphologically (and syntactically) belong to the category of not-1 object. Adding a separate category for 2 objects does not address this.

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Re:Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) by thechao on Sunday May 27, 2018 @05:55PM (#17169304)

I occasionally dabble in the spoken-out-loud “glassen” and “panten”. I should do it more.

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Re:Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) by amaccuish on Sunday May 27, 2018 @05:18PM (#17169153)

Got you, sorry misread :) though I guess the french have it right with un jean :)

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