AxialGem t1_ja6zqam wrote
Reply to comment by whyvswhynot12089 in Humen is a more logical plural to human than humans. It’s men and women, not mans and womans. by frenglish_man
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
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".
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.
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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