Hello English! WTF?
So I have a question for the linguists and related peoples, you could say it is a word problem:
Japanese has no plural to words. The number of objects under discussion is either metioned specifically or understood from context. English on the other hand does and an 's' to the end of words that travel in herds.
So what about lone words from Japanese? What is the grammatically correct thing to do? I've never noticed someone talking about having 6 sushis for lunch (though pieces of sushi would get around the whole question) And films titles like 'The Seven Samurai' suggest that the plural form of the word in the original language is preserved. However when I checked the OED their definition of samurai included a piece of text where that word was used in the plural form unconjugated, but daimyo (sort of a clan leader of samurai) was pluralized to daimyos.
Is the rule that there is no rule? If it is hodge-podge, who decides on a word-for-word basis?
Your assistance is appreciated.
Shade
Japanese has no plural to words. The number of objects under discussion is either metioned specifically or understood from context. English on the other hand does and an 's' to the end of words that travel in herds.
So what about lone words from Japanese? What is the grammatically correct thing to do? I've never noticed someone talking about having 6 sushis for lunch (though pieces of sushi would get around the whole question) And films titles like 'The Seven Samurai' suggest that the plural form of the word in the original language is preserved. However when I checked the OED their definition of samurai included a piece of text where that word was used in the plural form unconjugated, but daimyo (sort of a clan leader of samurai) was pluralized to daimyos.
Is the rule that there is no rule? If it is hodge-podge, who decides on a word-for-word basis?
Your assistance is appreciated.
Shade