The plural -s ending forming a noun out of an adjective is a fun little corner case in English morphology. "Politics" is explicitly patterned after Aristotle's τά πολῑτῐκᾱ́, "affairs of the state." "Mathematics" is from Latin mathematica, which is singular. "Physics" is attested as "physic" in older English, which conforms with its singular declension in Greek φυσική. I'm assuming this affix develops out of the truncation of a noun phrase, or the use of adjectives as substantives? Like, "Which candy do you like? I like red ones, I like the reds," type constructions. But it's fun that in the development of the -ics ending there's an English construction that's used in a way frequently parallel to the Greek derived -ology, or the older Germanic -craft. Seems especially suitable for big, complex fields like mathematics that have lots of subfields. Like, there's more than one mathematic! That makes a lot of sense to me. Though I guess American verbal agreement patterns still prefer a singular verb here, in contrast to the Commonwealth usage.

Note on this "math" versus "maths"; the number is consistent even with abbreviation.

(Brits make fun of Americans for saying "math", since the word obviously has an 's' on it; for years I've responded that in America we only have one mathematic.)

But this does make me ask the very silly question of whether British students ever take an econs class.

"Why do all gender-bent characters have names ending in -a, that's such a fanfic trope" buddy, the "girl names end in -a" trope is so old that JRR Tolkien invented a Hobbitish dialect of Westron in which "-a" is a masculine name affix, then turned around and "localised" those names to end in "-o" in the published text (e.g., Bilba > Bilbo, Maura > Frodo, etc.) so they wouldn't sound feminine to Anglophone readers.

Also isn’t that trope just derived from the fact that a lot of the Romance languages are gendered and that has influenced European linguistics and naming conventions to sound like that?

In part, yes, though the majority of personal names in most English-speaking cultures are not descended from Latin; this is one of those situations where you need to be cautious about leaping from "this influenced the situation" to "this is The Cause of the situation".

I was curious so I looked this up.

Apparently in Old English, -a was a typically masculine suffix. (Which may be how Hobbitish Westron wound up that way?) But I think that's unusual in Proto-Indo-European, which had -a as a typically feminine suffix. Which would explain why it's common and not just from Latin names.

It does raise the question of how it became a masculine ending in Old English, though.

The curse of actually knowing the historical difference between "skimming" and "scanning".

Historically, "skimming" and "scanning" were essentially opposite ways of engaging with a text. To "skim" is to read quickly and shallowly, trying to get the gist without engaging deeply; to "scan" is to read slowly and carefully and make sure you're not missing anything. Hence a "scanner" is something that analyzes an object in detail. E.g. OED:

But people today mostly use them as synonyms, as in "I didn't look closely, I just scanned it". And that makes me twitch quietly inside every time.

can I get a job as an editor but the only thing I do is correct when someone uses the word "prone" when they mean "supine"

thank you wikipedia for this really good image

a helpful mnemonic for everyone

My favorite bit about this is that we're getting together to nitpick a bit of linguistic pedantry

and then using "lay" for "lie".

Ballet : Ballerina :: Valet : Valerina

A valet is already a person! Therefore... what?

chalet : chalerina

You'd think that, but it's actually "Chalamet". Made-up linguistics are weird that way.

a valet (hard t; doesn't rhyme with ballet) is a person; valet (rhymes with ballet) is an action.

I think this is a British/American split; I've never heard "valet" pronounced with a hard "t" at the end and I would be genuinely confused if someone said it that way.

But this is going to go on the list with the time I went to Nando's with my new dance team and said I was going to order a chicken filet sandwich, and my friend looks very confused at me for a moment, then goes "oh, you mean a chicken fillet sandwich".

(Like, this is part of my standard comedy routine about "things were different in Britain!" Every American I've spoken to is horrified. Also "garage".)

'valet' in particular is one of those Upper Class shibboleths. since america doesn't have what is meant by an upper class in this context...

Huh that's more different than I thought.

In America the word is in common use, because a "valet" is the guy who takes your car at a nice restaurant so you don't have to park it yourself. (Or in areas where space is scarce enough that you need to double-park all the slots so they fit; it happens a lot in urban areas in non-mass-transit cities.) My building has valet parking; it's not like normal but it's pretty common. One of my friends in college worked part time for a pop-up valet parking company. (If you're throwing a big house party at your fancy house, you can hire the company to deal with parking all your guests' cars.)

Come to think of it, when my British ex came out to visit in grad school and we went some place that had valet parking, she wanted to do it just because she'd heard of it but never experienced it. (I generally think of it as, like, mildly annoying, because it's more expensive and then you have to wait for your car when you leave rather than just walking to it.)

But yeah, in our context I think "valet" can only in common speech refer to the parking thing. I'm aware of the older use but, as you say, that never comes up.

Ballet : Ballerina :: Valet : Valerina

A valet is already a person! Therefore... what?

chalet : chalerina

You'd think that, but it's actually "Chalamet". Made-up linguistics are weird that way.

a valet (hard t; doesn't rhyme with ballet) is a person; valet (rhymes with ballet) is an action.

I think this is a British/American split; I've never heard "valet" pronounced with a hard "t" at the end and I would be genuinely confused if someone said it that way.

But this is going to go on the list with the time I went to Nando's with my new dance team and said I was going to order a chicken filet sandwich, and my friend looks very confused at me for a moment, then goes "oh, you mean a chicken fillet sandwich".

(Like, this is part of my standard comedy routine about "things were different in Britain!" Every American I've spoken to is horrified. Also "garage".)

Ways of inventing fantasy words, ranked

Inspired by my Final Fantasy XII playthrough.

A: Resonant historical, literary, or mythological reference. "Ifrit", "Leviathan"

A-: Reference obscure enough that you might not get it and the writers maybe didn't either. "Shiva", "Belias".

B+: reasonably transparent English compound. "airship", "skystone", "time battlemage".

B: Non-transparent but reasonably guessible English. "black mage", "white mage".

B-: Arbitrary but clear English compound. "red mage", "foebreaker".

C+: Made up but with reasonable English roots and grammatical components. "magicite", "avion", "Westersand".

C: Just totally made up. "chocobo", "jagd", "viera".

C-: Totally made up but wants to convince you it's technical vocabulary that comes from somewhere. "nethicite". (Yeah, to tell the difference between this and a C+ you might have to ask Potter Stewart.)

D: Taking a normal English word and changing the spelling to make it exotic. "magick."

F: Taking a perfectly good real word that already means what you want and changing it because go fuck yourself. "Manufacted".

F-----: pronouncing the "s" in the title "Marquis".

I'd tell you two to fight it out among yourselves, but I don't want to let anyone else have all the fun of getting in a fight with Loki.

I did actually look this up before I posted; it just didn't stop me. (it did lead to my tag commentary, though.)

Wiktionary has:

And the audio clip clearly pronounces the "s" at the end. So they at least say that RP pronounces it like FFXII does, and that it's an accepted pronunciation in General American.

This, of course, means that Wiktionary (and also Received Pronunciation, apparently) are part of the problem.

My understanding is that historically the word in English was "marquess" (in which the 's' is pronounced), with "marquis" being the French spelling, which is pronounced mar-kee (the feminine forms being "marchioness" and "marquise," respectively). Wikipedia agrees with this. However, modern English has taken to sometimes using the two words interchangeably, and using the English pronunciation with the French spelling.

I don't necessarily think that ifrit is more mainstream than Shiva, although I'm not sure that's wrong either.

I think that the Final Fantasy summon "Ifrit", which is a fire demon, is reasonably close to the source mythology about the ifrit. Whereas the Final Fantasy summon "Shiva", which is a half-naked ice enchantress lady, is not terribly close to the source mythology about Shiva. Which makes "Ifrit" a resonant and well-chosen name, whereas "Shiva" feels like someone was playing Mythological Name Roulette.

Ah fair. Yeah it’s half mythology half potential multilingual pun half nonsense fanservice

Wait, oh no. Are you telling me they named the ice summon "Shiva" because it sounded like "shiver"?

That might actually make it an A-. I said mythology reference, but "word from another language" fits the same category I think. It's an A- because hunting ground isn't exactly right, but isn't exactly wrong either.

(In context, it's an area where airships can't fly; that means that it's less civilized land, wilderness, and in practice that its' where you fight a bunch of wilderness encounters. So hunting ground fits okay.)

Ways of inventing fantasy words, ranked

Inspired by my Final Fantasy XII playthrough.

A: Resonant historical, literary, or mythological reference. "Ifrit", "Leviathan"

A-: Reference obscure enough that you might not get it and the writers maybe didn't either. "Shiva", "Belias".

B+: reasonably transparent English compound. "airship", "skystone", "time battlemage".

B: Non-transparent but reasonably guessible English. "black mage", "white mage".

B-: Arbitrary but clear English compound. "red mage", "foebreaker".

C+: Made up but with reasonable English roots and grammatical components. "magicite", "avion", "Westersand".

C: Just totally made up. "chocobo", "jagd", "viera".

C-: Totally made up but wants to convince you it's technical vocabulary that comes from somewhere. "nethicite". (Yeah, to tell the difference between this and a C+ you might have to ask Potter Stewart.)

D: Taking a normal English word and changing the spelling to make it exotic. "magick."

F: Taking a perfectly good real word that already means what you want and changing it because go fuck yourself. "Manufacted".

F-----: pronouncing the "s" in the title "Marquis".

I'd tell you two to fight it out among yourselves, but I don't want to let anyone else have all the fun of getting in a fight with Loki.

I did actually look this up before I posted; it just didn't stop me. (it did lead to my tag commentary, though.)

Wiktionary has:

And the audio clip clearly pronounces the "s" at the end. So they at least say that RP pronounces it like FFXII does, and that it's an accepted pronunciation in General American.

This, of course, means that Wiktionary (and also Received Pronunciation, apparently) are part of the problem.

My understanding is that historically the word in English was "marquess" (in which the 's' is pronounced), with "marquis" being the French spelling, which is pronounced mar-kee (the feminine forms being "marchioness" and "marquise," respectively). Wikipedia agrees with this. However, modern English has taken to sometimes using the two words interchangeably, and using the English pronunciation with the French spelling.

I don't necessarily think that ifrit is more mainstream than Shiva, although I'm not sure that's wrong either.

I think that the Final Fantasy summon "Ifrit", which is a fire demon, is reasonably close to the source mythology about the ifrit. Whereas the Final Fantasy summon "Shiva", which is a half-naked ice enchantress lady, is not terribly close to the source mythology about Shiva. Which makes "Ifrit" a resonant and well-chosen name, whereas "Shiva" feels like someone was playing Mythological Name Roulette.

Ah fair. Yeah it’s half mythology half potential multilingual pun half nonsense fanservice

Wait, oh no. Are you telling me they named the ice summon "Shiva" because it sounded like "shiver"?

Ways of inventing fantasy words, ranked

Inspired by my Final Fantasy XII playthrough.

A: Resonant historical, literary, or mythological reference. "Ifrit", "Leviathan"

A-: Reference obscure enough that you might not get it and the writers maybe didn't either. "Shiva", "Belias".

B+: reasonably transparent English compound. "airship", "skystone", "time battlemage".

B: Non-transparent but reasonably guessible English. "black mage", "white mage".

B-: Arbitrary but clear English compound. "red mage", "foebreaker".

C+: Made up but with reasonable English roots and grammatical components. "magicite", "avion", "Westersand".

C: Just totally made up. "chocobo", "jagd", "viera".

C-: Totally made up but wants to convince you it's technical vocabulary that comes from somewhere. "nethicite". (Yeah, to tell the difference between this and a C+ you might have to ask Potter Stewart.)

D: Taking a normal English word and changing the spelling to make it exotic. "magick."

F: Taking a perfectly good real word that already means what you want and changing it because go fuck yourself. "Manufacted".

F-----: pronouncing the "s" in the title "Marquis".

I'd tell you two to fight it out among yourselves, but I don't want to let anyone else have all the fun of getting in a fight with Loki.

I did actually look this up before I posted; it just didn't stop me. (it did lead to my tag commentary, though.)

Wiktionary has:

And the audio clip clearly pronounces the "s" at the end. So they at least say that RP pronounces it like FFXII does, and that it's an accepted pronunciation in General American.

This, of course, means that Wiktionary (and also Received Pronunciation, apparently) are part of the problem.

My understanding is that historically the word in English was "marquess" (in which the 's' is pronounced), with "marquis" being the French spelling, which is pronounced mar-kee (the feminine forms being "marchioness" and "marquise," respectively). Wikipedia agrees with this. However, modern English has taken to sometimes using the two words interchangeably, and using the English pronunciation with the French spelling.

I don't necessarily think that ifrit is more mainstream than Shiva, although I'm not sure that's wrong either.

I think that the Final Fantasy summon "Ifrit", which is a fire demon, is reasonably close to the source mythology about the ifrit. Whereas the Final Fantasy summon "Shiva", which is a half-naked ice enchantress lady, is not terribly close to the source mythology about Shiva. Which makes "Ifrit" a resonant and well-chosen name, whereas "Shiva" feels like someone was playing Mythological Name Roulette.

Ways of inventing fantasy words, ranked

Inspired by my Final Fantasy XII playthrough.

A: Resonant historical, literary, or mythological reference. "Ifrit", "Leviathan"

A-: Reference obscure enough that you might not get it and the writers maybe didn't either. "Shiva", "Belias".

B+: reasonably transparent English compound. "airship", "skystone", "time battlemage".

B: Non-transparent but reasonably guessible English. "black mage", "white mage".

B-: Arbitrary but clear English compound. "red mage", "foebreaker".

C+: Made up but with reasonable English roots and grammatical components. "magicite", "avion", "Westersand".

C: Just totally made up. "chocobo", "jagd", "viera".

C-: Totally made up but wants to convince you it's technical vocabulary that comes from somewhere. "nethicite". (Yeah, to tell the difference between this and a C+ you might have to ask Potter Stewart.)

D: Taking a normal English word and changing the spelling to make it exotic. "magick."

F: Taking a perfectly good real word that already means what you want and changing it because go fuck yourself. "Manufacted".

F-----: pronouncing the "s" in the title "Marquis".

I'd tell you two to fight it out among yourselves, but I don't want to let anyone else have all the fun of getting in a fight with Loki.

I did actually look this up before I posted; it just didn't stop me. (it did lead to my tag commentary, though.)

Wiktionary has:

And the audio clip clearly pronounces the "s" at the end. So they at least say that RP pronounces it like FFXII does, and that it's an accepted pronunciation in General American.

This, of course, means that Wiktionary (and also Received Pronunciation, apparently) are part of the problem.

ohh my god naan bread means bread bread? people are adopting a foreign word next to a general noun of their own language to specify they mean a distinct type that hails from that particular foreign country? no way man. do you have strong feelings on the word moist by any chance

Okay so like I agree with the point op is making

But I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "naan bread" in real life? (Except when making variants of this joke.)

Don't people usually just say "naan"?

You can tell we live in the best of possible worlds because the most spoken language on earth has a (mostly) phonetic writing system and doesn't use inflectional morphology

English uses plenty of inflectional morphology (more than Mandarin, which actually uses none), and a lot of it is irregular! Sing, sang, sung, build, built, cow, cows, vs. ox, oxen!

My native-Mandarin-speaking friend told me she didn't like learning the English past tenses so she just never bothered. She says they aren't important and everyone understands her just fine without them. She only uses present tense verbs.

^why English best language

I love the idea of trying to quixotically wrench your L2 in your preferred direction just by refusing to use the parts you don’t like.

Gonna start ignoring all case and gender in German.

And like part of the point here is that while English does have some legacy inflectional stuff, it's not really load-bearing, right? There's nothing stopping us from saying singed or oxes or builded (and in fact that last one used to be a standard form!).

The problem is that nothing is stopping you from saying "boxen" or "dove" instead of "boxes" or "dived", and people do that with language.

the anglophone t/v distinction fans i keep seeing on this app need to get weeaboo-grade obsessed with Yorkshire culture it would be so fucking funny for me personally.

and it’s not like it’s been done either. fandom tumblr’s teaboo phase didn’t touch on this shit at all; closest they got to recognising England has a north was an alien from Salford and even then they preferred the one that was a Scottish guy doing a generic southern English accent.

(for today’s lucky 10000 or whatever the number in the xkcd comic is: in Yorkshire (and to some extent in a few other parts of northern England), English retains a t/v distinction with ‘thou’ and ‘you’.)

Edit: I grew up speaking an english dialect with a t/v distinction: language nerds AMA

What verb conjugations did you grow up using with "thou"?

i forget what conjugations means exactly but we said ‘thou art’ for ‘are’ if that’s the thing

Did you also have "thou hast" or "thou shalt" or "thou dost" or "thou wilt"? Or was "art" the only verb form that you used there that we don't use in like Standard American?