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Comment by daveslash | Hacker News Reader

It may be a word like "fishes". I once saw "fishes" on an interpretive sign at an aquarium and some folks were mocking such and obvious grammatical error. Turns out, "fish" is the correct way to refer to multiple individual fish as a group, whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple species of fish.

I wonder if "octopi" might refer to multiple octopus without making any indication as to weather they are or are not the same species, whereas 'octopodes' deliberately speaks across speciation? I dunno... I'm just spit-balling here. I probably should have done more research before commenting. Downvote if I'm way off base. :)

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There’s no right way. Octopus is a word created in modern scientific latin by nonnative (scientific) speakers out of greek parts brought into English. There are no real rules there.

It is not a loanword from Greek, it was meant to be a scientific latin origin word, but not native latin like other Latin words that have -us as endings for nouns.

It’s a mess, there’s no answer, pluralize as you like but don’t go telling anyone there’s a right way because there isn’t. It’s a greek, latin, and english word, but also none of them. No usage is standard or ultimately correct.

Personally I've always preferred to muddy the waters by treating it as a fourth-declension noun, so that its plural would be octopūs.

so then we are free to allow any convention to take hold.

so why not use the multiple different potential pluralities to differentiate between same species, different species, and unknown species? I think the following would be the most intuitive!

Octopuses seems most intuitive and already assumes unknown species (ie used by children who dont even know what a species is)

Octopi sounds similar to a singular entity (no trailing s), so a group from a single species

Octopodes then could explicitly refer to multiple species together, as it changes the spelling a bit and also adds an s

Of course, conventions are not decided upon by a single persons thought process in a random internet forum - so I'm not sure why I wrote this out

I feel like there has to be one of those "galaxy brain" progression memes for Octopuses -> Octopi -> Octopodes

Love it. This is now my convention. So it's at least TWO people in a random internet forum!

> Octopus is a word created in modern scientific latin by nonnative (scientific) speakers out of greek parts brought into English. There are no real rules there.

I recall reading that back in the day, there were criticisms that the neologism "television" would never catch on ... because it combined Greek and Latin roots.

>because it combined Greek and Latin roots.

Romances in a nutshell.

Is it true the majority of imperial Rome personal names had -anus endings and they are not in vogue in Modern English for the obvious soundalike to Uranus?

And given the time available to an octopus while she waits for her eggs to hatch, what is the recommended reading list from the Loeb library for the octopus's consciousness if there were a universal translator babelfish she could use?

In Spanish it's the same. Ano = anus. Trajano, Adriano...

Yet we still have names ending in -ano. Mariano, Emiliano, Cipriano, Maximiliano...

There's a wrong way, though - anybody smugly telling somebody they're an idiot for saying 'octopuses' when it's actually 'octopi'.

I think 'octopodes' is 'most correct', but 'octopuses' is fine. And most will mispronounce 'octopodes' if they choose it anyway, so 'octopuses' probably would've been better.

octopodes nutz

There may be no universally agreed right way, but there are certainly wrong ways. "Octopuses" and "octopodes" are both acceptable, but "octopi" is wrong. "Octopuses" can be justified using Fowler's rule (from 1913!) "there is a tendency to abandon the Latin plurals, & that when one is really in doubt which to use the English form should be given the preference". "Octopodes" can be justified on etymological grounds. There is no basis to use "octopi" other than an erroneous application of the Latin rule to form plurals for second declension nouns.

So essentially, the squids are alright?

octopi arises because people have learned Latin 2nd declension masculine nouns, by accident or repetition, where pluralizing (nominative case) turns the -us to -i.

It's a pattern matching phenomenon.

It would be less weird if there were not spelling irregularities, since the -pus is meant to be foot (like pes, pedes...in Latin, or pos, podes,... in Greek).

Basically, the spelling irregularity triggers a sensible pattern match, which happens to of course not honor the spelling irregularity.

And then nerds like me write too much about such, but i had years of Latin (and a little Greek) for something!

Ironically, when not used as a word ending, but as a single word... "I" is a singular way to talk about a person (namely, oneself), where as "us" is a plural way to talk about multiple people.

Maddeningly, it doesn't even apply to all Latin -us nouns. For instance, the plural of apparatus should be apparatūs if we're applying the Latin rules. Apparati, as it might seem, makes no sense! So even when the pattern match correctly identifies the language, it can be misleading.

--fellow Latin nerd

4th or 5th declension esoterica ftw!

apparatus is a past participle from apparare, so as an adjective plural would follow second declension, not fourth, i thought.

used as a noun, it's an (implicit thing) prepared (which preparatus would describe, but i guess we don't have any other word in English other than apparatus.

i don't have a Latin dictionary though

apparatus is first/second as a past participle. I suppose it could be used as a substantive, but there is also a fourth declension noun with the same lemma meaning implements, tools, etc.: https://logeion.uchicago.edu/apparatus

one that I often hear foreign speakers struggling with is “hair”. 1 hair, 2 hairs, a whole head of hair. seemingly, if it’s countable it follows normal rules, if it’s not, it goes back to singular form. but then it could be absolutely correct to say “the many hairs on my head”, an uncountable which retains the plural.

English is an absolute mess

All languages are a mess. Imagine instead of specific noun rules, every single noun had a rule by way of a gender. And to conjugate “boat” or “table” you need to know its arbitrary gender.

English, unlike a lot of the big European languages, doesn’t have a central controlling body and hasn’t gone through powerful standardisation efforts - beyond dictionaries (i.e. consistent spelling and meaning). many (most?) European languages follow pretty consistent conjugation and pronunciation rules. yeah there are a few exceptions in each case, but nowhere near the scale of English.

grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard as learning the words themselves

> grammatical gender is in most cases only really as hard as learning the words themselves

That's a really good point actually, one I've not heard before.

I think it's still harder learning from an ungendered language, since you naturally think of mapping word:word, but you also need word:gender now. With your point though, maybe I can have an easier time of it by trying to consciously think of it instead as word:(word, gender), if that makes sense.

Japanese is worse. You count "1 thing", "2 thing", "3 thing", except the word for "thing" changes depending on the shape of the thing you are counting.

So thin flat things like paper or shirts are 1 mai, 2 mai, 3 mai, while to count books you say 1 satsu, 2 satsu, 3 satsu.

Long round things like pencils or umbrellas go 1 pon, 2 hon, 3 bon, 4 hon, 5 hon, 6 pon, etc (yeah you read that right).

There are different counter words for different kinds of animals, small things, vehicles, shoes, drinks, people, etc.

https://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-numbers-co...

christ that is horrendous, especially pon hon bon hon hon pon. is there some kind of historical logic behind it?

It's for a better sounding liaison depending on the preceding number

ippon nihon sanbon yonhon gohon roppon

That's just consonant mutation[0][1], like how english speakers say "a pencil" but "an umbrella"[2]. (Ie, "hon", "pon", and "bon" are all the same word, just pronounced differently due to environment.) The fact that ほぼぽ (ho bo po) are all the same underlying letter, just with different diacritics, kind of hints at this.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_mutation

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendaku

2: Of course, English pretty much only does the conspicous verson of this for that one word, because English.

> it’s countable it follows normal rules, if it’s not, it goes back to singular form.

You'd have a hard time counting all the stars, but "sky of star" doesn't work like "head of hair" does. I love how expressive English is, but it's got issues for sure.

> but then it could be absolutely correct to say “the many hairs on my head”, an uncountable which retains the plural.

That's not an uncountable. It's the count form, explicitly being counted by the count-noun-exclusive determiner many. (The mass form of many is much.)

The entire difference between "the hair on my head" and "the hairs on my head" is that in the second one you're counting the hairs.

Mass noun is the term for that. Octopus is generally only a mass noun if talking about their meat.

As far as the plural goes, it is just a weird corner of the language where there is no consensus on what the right word is. merriam-webster lists all three variants as plurals.

> ...whereas "fishes" is the correct way to refer to multiple species of fish.

What about the fishes of bread and fishes fame?

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