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whyvswhynot12089 t1_ja6x8tr wrote

Reply to comment by AxialGem in Humen is a more logical plural to human than humans. It’s men and women, not mans and womans. by frenglish_man

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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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_ja70xz3 wrote

I wasn't claiming the etymology of the word lol. Just why human/humen wouldn't work practically. That being said, human didn't start with the french word "humain". It started with the latin "homo" and then the latin "humanis"....That french word "humain" showed up around 300 years later.

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whyvswhynot12089 t1_ja74ixi wrote

I know most plural french words include an S on the end and Normandy invaded England, which contributed to middle English taking up some Middle French words...but are you sure other loan languages use an "s" for plural?

(I'm really don't know/am genuinely asking. )

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AxialGem t1_ja700qh wrote

Exactly! By the time the word human entered the language, the process that led to the vowel change in man~men was already long dead. Same with geese but not (usually) *meese

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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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whyvswhynot12089 t1_ja75hd0 wrote

Well of course the languages a word is based on are going to affect the spelling. I understand etymology is a thing lol. That just seems like a really obvious answer for anyone posting about English in this subreddit.

If Normandy hadn't invaded England, we would have likely taken "human" from the older latin word "humanis".

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AxialGem t1_ja76xm6 wrote

>we would have likely taken "human" from the older latin word "humanis".

Possibly. My point is that a loan word tends to adopt the grammar of the language it's adoped into at the time it was adoped.

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If you make some popcorn in a pan, then turn off the heat and add more kernels, the new ones aren't going to be popped. Because the condition which caused the popping has already stopped. Similarly, new loanwords by default aren't affected by a process that has already stopped.

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whyvswhynot12089 t1_ja92jjy wrote

I got your point the first time. I just think history is a lot more variable than heat in a pan. Loan words don't always stop evolving at their point of origin circumstances.

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