Or "inflammable".

Or "Aural" and "Oral"

Or Ox > Oxen, Fox > Foxes

None of those are accidents, or maybe all of those are accidents, like it is mostly common in languages

Define accident. None of them seem particularly well thought out, or planned.

Who needs to plan a language? I love the mess that is English, there's so much history encoded in it - like how our words for common farm animals are Anglo-Saxon but the words for their meat are French, which is a snapshot of England being invaded by a French speaking Norman aristocracy who ate what the Anglo-Saxon peasants raised.

I love the different dialects that are developing of it. I particularly love my country's variant, enriched with Maori. "Kia ora bro" as a greeting captures our spirit nicely.

I love the fact that English "pursues other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary". It's a glorious organic mess. Much like humanity.

Of course, I'm glad I'm not having to learn it as a second language.

I agree with the sentiment. It's a mess, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, though there are draw backs.

"Of course, I'm glad I'm not having to learn it as a second language."

As I said, I agree with the sentiment :)

> None of them seem particularly well thought out, or planned.

The question is: is anything planned?

People don't even use the correct possessive version of 'it' on the internet.

Ox became Oxen because the plural 'en' was the productive plural construction at the time, and it made more sense than writing 'Oxes'.

For the other words there might have been a historical reason (or just no reason at all) for it.

French is kind of planned, that's why we're having this conversation.

"Formal French" is planned, but the language goes on without it.

For example, the AF is oblivious to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan (unless a word there ends hitting common usage)

> Some verlan words, such as meuf, have become so commonplace that they have been included in the Petit Larousse[3] and a doubly "verlanised" version was deemed necessary, so the singly verlanised meuf became feumeu; similarly, the verlan word beur, derived from arabe, has become accepted into popular culture such that it has been re-verlanised to yield rebeu

The Académie is much more au fait with modern French than you think it is.

This communication, from 2001, on the future of the French language for example http://www.academie-francaise.fr/lavenir-de-la-langue-franca... talks at length about verlan. Just to translate a small excerpt:

A language that stays still is a dying language. Ours is enriching in proportions never seen before. What the 21th century will bring us is verlan. It would be useless to fight it, as oral language has always preceded written language.

I think the Académie is much more competent than many people here think it is.

Ahah yes, verlan is quite common for certain words for certain people. But nobody thinks it is legit french. It's like using terms like "doggo", "boi" or "nite" in english.

English speakers themselves are quite capable of sorting this kind of thing out for themselves without waiting for the deliberations of the appointed whose decisions they'll probably ignore anyway - as do the French, one gathers. Life and English are both messy but we muddle through.

> Life and English are both messy but we muddle through.

As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.

> As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.

Huh I never noticed this peculiarity of English before. "I am an Italian/Australian/Canadian" - fine. "I am an English/French/Swedish" - hell no. Traditionally you'd say Frenchman, nowadays you'd avoid the gender and use "I am French" directly as an adjective.

Anyone know why -an words can be used as a noun and -sh words can't?

-an words are initially nouns that have come to be used as adjectives, while -ish words are only adjectives.

The English language readily makes adjectives from nouns, but not the other way round. Nominalized adjectives are used for collective groups at most (which is why you can say "the French") but rarely become regular nouns.

"As a french person" would be the typical genderless replacement, not restructuring the sentence entirely.

muddling through, I have managed to deduce that by 'As a french,' you mean that you are French, am I correct?

If you see biweekly somewhere, it is impossible to know what it means without more explanations, even context isn't enough. This has been like this for years and nobody's even tried to fix it.

What is the point of having such confusion?

Also, why having dictionaries at all? And who decides which one is right?

Why not have a body made up of experts who make that decisions once and for all when natural evolution leads to bad results?

> Also, why having dictionaries at all?

Exactly the opposite of why you think we have them, apparently. In English-speaking countries, dictionaries document existing usage, they don’t try to influence it. No modern dictionary has any opinion on what usage is “correct”, and you can find a lot of extremely non-standard things in the most prestigious dictionaries.