Fun little tidbit: the word “loanword” itself is a sub-type of a loanword, a calque, which is a word-by-word translation from a word in a different language. It was brought to English from the German “Lehnwort”.
Loans generally follow the grammar of the host language. English has a plural, it doesn’t have a dative.
Well, a dative marked by morphology, that is, outside of “him/her/whom”, instead it’s done by word order. Take “The smith gave the miller the hammer”, “the miller” is dative, “the hammer” is accusative, you can’t say “The smith gave the hammer the miller”.
Also “of a thousand ani” is genitive, marking of that is done with “of” or “'s”.
As to plural form: English has a gazillion of those: Caboose, cabeese (yay Ablaut!), box, boxen, etc. Some Latin doesn’t hurt.
If you wanted to be less wrong, but still try to look smart, you could use octopodes, since it’s of Greek root. But in any case, it’s an English word, and thus is Octopuses.
Blood of a thousand innocent ani
Isn’t “of a thousand anus” a dative construct, so the plural should be “anis”?
Afaik you don’t declinate loanwords beyond the plural, but you’d have to ask Merriam Webster for that.
Fun little tidbit: the word “loanword” itself is a sub-type of a loanword, a calque, which is a word-by-word translation from a word in a different language. It was brought to English from the German “Lehnwort”.
🤯
Loans generally follow the grammar of the host language. English has a plural, it doesn’t have a dative.
Well, a dative marked by morphology, that is, outside of “him/her/whom”, instead it’s done by word order. Take “The smith gave the miller the hammer”, “the miller” is dative, “the hammer” is accusative, you can’t say “The smith gave the hammer the miller”.
Also “of a thousand ani” is genitive, marking of that is done with “of” or “'s”.
As to plural form: English has a gazillion of those: Caboose, cabeese (yay Ablaut!), box, boxen, etc. Some Latin doesn’t hurt.
Then the correct plural is “anorum” in this case.
Octopi
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Octopuses. It’s an English word, not Latin.
If you wanted to be less wrong, but still try to look smart, you could use octopodes, since it’s of Greek root. But in any case, it’s an English word, and thus is Octopuses.
All 3 are correct because language is determined by use https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-many-plurals-of-octopus-octopi-octopuses-octopodes
Read some Wittgenstein nerd.
Get out of here you descriptivist.
Don’t you know we here folk on lemmy are prescriptivists by law? God help you if autocorrect messes with your intended statement.
/s (if required)
prescriptivites (/s)
You can make up whatever words you want, yes.
That’s just saying you’re ignorant of how other people communicate, so you’re going to make up your own words and hope for the best.
You seem to be the one ignorant of how other people communicate.
And you seem to want to make up more words because your vocabulary is limited. Defend ypur ignorance as much as you want. 🤷
What are you even talking about? I haven’t made up any words.
Do Moose and Meese next!
House and Hice.