• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Octopodes.

    It’s Greek-based, not Latin. English often tries to keep certain rules about loan words from other languages. So, the plural of “alumnus” isn’t “alumneses” but “alumni”. It also mostly keeps the spelling of loan words, which causes all kinds of problems when that spelling is very different from English spelling. For example, “voila” is so different from how someone would spell it in English that a lot of people write “wala” because they don’t know French.

    But, I agree that other than having gendered nouns, Spanish is a much more sensible language than English. It does have its quirks though, like “si” vs “sí”, “te” vs “té” or “él” vs “el”. I get that those are to distinguish homonyms, but are they really necessary? Words like “cara” and “sierra” exist and it’s just like any homonym in English. Spanish also has silent letters like “h” so “errar” and “herrar” are pronounced the same but written differently. Also, “y” and “ll” are often pronounced the same way, and many Spanish speakers can’t differentiate between “b” and “v”.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Despite being theoretically most correct, octopodes is least correct in English because it doesn’t actually matter what the root of a word is if everybody uses it differently.