Octopus is greek, no? So shouldn’t it, if anything, be Octopedes?
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Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 11 months agoYup, you can do this for any loanword with unusual pluralisation. You can either use the plural form from the source language or from English.
Octopi can also be octopusses for instance, but some people will tell you that’s wrong. Ultimately really, if your language is accepted and nobody is confused, it’s valid. The rules really aren’t as concrete as many people seem to believe.
Carighan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
That’s a theory based on the origin of the word, but nobody says that and if you tried to use it to communicate that idea, most people wouldn’t understand what you were talking about. So under a descriptive model of language, no, it isn’t octopedes. It’s only right if it works, and you can’t dictate language rules based on some preconceived idea of what is “correct”. Language is negotiated, not mandated.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 11 months ago
For Octopus… Octopi is just plain incorrect, it assumes an incorrect loanword origin, even if it is the most common pluralization used.
Octopus does not come from Latin which would result in octopi. It comes from Greek, so the correct plural should be octopodes.
The English standard pluralization would still be Octopuses though, and most comprehensible all around without having to explain the whole thing to a new person. In the end it’s all about being understood over anything else.
Klaymore@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’ve heard you can say “octopodes” as well
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
I would say try it, and you’ll find without a lot of context cues, most people won’t understand you. Language is fundamentally about communication, so the measure is not whether it conforms to some rote form but whether it is effective at conveying an idea. I would say based on that, octopedes is wrong.