Recent comments in /f/Showerthoughts

AxialGem t1_ja6zqam wrote

Sure, that's an interesting way to look at it. Of course, ambiguity does in fact exist in many places in the language, and not all cases prompt us to make distinctions to clear it up. Case in point: almost all regular plurals can be confused with possessives: "It was my cats/cat's."

Maybe that's a factor, but the biggest thing of course is that the word human was never in a position to have a vowel change in the plural. The reason why the vowel doesn't change is a historical and etymological one, the same reason why the common plural of moose isn't meese (despite goose~geese). If it did have a vowel change today, it would have had to have been formed later by analogy, and what you said may contribute to that not having happened imo

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BodAlmighty t1_ja6z9by wrote

I wouldn't think so, we humans came up with the hour, minute, second etc.

Plus, with the average lifespan of cats/dogs and that - even larger cats for instance being much shorter than ours, they reach 'adulthood' after around a year so their metabolism affects their passage of time... (like how we say "He's 7 in dog years")

A tortoise or a parrot can live for over 200 years on average so our 'year' may only feel like two months to them... And of course some animals do sleep for entire days through their lifespan, Bears, Hedgehogs etc hibernate through the winter, and Cicadas 'sleep' for 17 years so imagine a 'day' for them! 😀

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CrashBandioof420 t1_ja6yjjf wrote

The word "human" comes from Middle French "humain". Foreign words in English usually get their plural by adding s at the end. The word "man" comes from Old English "mann" and the plural of mann was menn. Some of Old English's plural system carried over to modern English, and thus we have
man -> men

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CrashBandioof420 t1_ja6yhp1 wrote

That's not why the word "human" doesn't have a vowel-changing plural though. The word "human" comes from Middle French "humain". Loan words in English usually get their plural by adding s at the end. The word "man" comes from Old English "mann" and the plural of mann was menn. Some of Old English's plural system carried over to modern English, and thus we have

man -> men

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whyvswhynot12089 t1_ja6x8tr wrote

Those words aren't exactly a beacon of clarity either...but I see more problems happening with the word "human"....because it's not just a noun. Words like "Sheep" and "barman" are just nouns, so it's easy enough to just add an article to clarify the difference, between plural and singular.

Example sentence: "If it was human/humen."

If you're just listening and the person has an accent or lacks perfect diction....It's impossible to tell if they're talking about the quality of being human or "humans" plural.

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Chrisnolliedelves t1_ja6wwxw wrote

"Potentially"

He straight up did. Power was derived from a whole new emotional source which requires a different skill set to extract. This power source is also 10 times more potent than the previous power source. The factory that once trained it's workers in horror and fear now trains in entertainment and comedy. Waternoose's crimes and conspiracies were laid bare to the public and scream energy would never be trusted again.

This is a base-level reading of the film's ending, not a shower thought.

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