Comment on An oldie but a goodie

GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Isn’t it in a dative construct, so the plural should be “anis”?

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  • GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Afaik you don’t declinate loanwords beyond the plural, but you’d have to ask Merriam Webster for that.

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    • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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”.

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      • keefshape@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        🤯

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    • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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’s neighbour” is dative, “the hammer” is accusative, you can’t say “The smith gave the hammer the miller”.

      Also “of a thousand ani” is genitive (whose), 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.

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      • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Then the correct plural is “anorum”.

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• reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Octopi

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  • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • AnxiousOtter@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Do Moose and Meese next!

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      • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        House and Hice.

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  • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Octopussy

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