this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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I like to think that my English is quite good, but this one threw me off. Am I supposed to understand from the name wug that the plural of wug is not wugs?
Edit: if plural of wug is wug, then why isn't plural of rug rug, but rugs? Or am I mistaken there as well?
It's a nonsense word, there's no right or wrong plural for it, most will say wugs, just like you did and that's the entire point of this test.
Oh I see. Thanks!
Love your user name by the way. I should have thought to grab a reference like that while the user count is low.
Exactly what the guy with two heads said :)
You can simply look for an instance where that username is not taken yet… there are 1400 instances, though not all joinable or desirable, and some surely have a zaphod already… but it is really easy to obtain the exact username you desire.
It wouldn't have to be that exact name though. Any H2G2 reference would be cool, like vogon, agrajag or something. But I see what you mean about just creating the same name on a different lemmy instance. I guess that's an aspect of the fediverse I hadn't thought about.
For sure! I briefly debated using a different reference, but the explanation works nicely with that example given that it’s already taken at least once.
Given this link, the expected response is 'wugs'.
That's one of the interesting things about language. It's all just sounds that we agree represent ideas.
But, because language use is such an intrinsic part of our brains, the rules around language are picked up much faster than we realize. This test is generally done with very young children that haven't had much (if any) grammat traint. They just pick you that adding s to the end of a noun means that there are multiple of if. They'll use that rule even when the noun is nonsense.
But that rule is arbitrary to an extent. We could collectively agree that adding k at the end means plural. It doesn't even have to be at the end, it could be anywhere in the word.
Some words don't follow the normal rules. Like mouse, and mice when talking about the animals. Or the exceptions I mentioned earlier.
If we apply those exceptions to a nonsense noun like wug, it is no more or less "right" than adding s. But the test is about showing how language develops, not how a given language functions.
English is an odd language sometimes though. We borrow words from other languages, sometimes adopting the grammar and rules, sometimes not. But English is built on multiple older languages to begin with, so the rules it has can be mind boggling.
I also wanted to add another aspect to this test:
The difference between wug-s (voiced fricative, sounds like z) and wug-s (unvoiced, sounds like s).
As an example:
Dogs (dog/z/)
Cats (cat/s/)
The same pluralization rule is applied to both words, but the actual sounds made are different depending on the voicing of the previous sound/letter. You can feel the 'voicing' (vibration) of different sounds by putting your hand on your throat while saying these words.
Also fun fact I have a tattoo of a wug :)
Yeah. Norwegian is also borrowing a lot of words from other languages like that. Lots of our words are in English as well. Our grammar is similar that way that we have differences in the ending structure for some of those borrowed words, but I only think we do that for verbs.