[lit-ideas] Childern's

In a message dated 10/29/2004 8:14:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, Jlsperanza  
writes:
JLS can  give us some thoughts on the oddness of the word.
Well, yes. Technically, if the singular is 'child', the plural should be  
'childs'. (as in Childs, the collecter [sic] of balladry. 
More below.
 
Cheers,
 
JL
 
---
 
From Rory Ewins, "Stand Up", chapter 9:
 
"I like reading about where words come from, how the language has changed,  
all of that stuff. Plurals are interestingâ??the way most of them end with 's', 
 
but there are some that don't, like 'children'. Apparently, way, way back,  
before about, oh, Tuesday, most plurals used to end in '-en'. People would say, 
 
'You see those housen? With all the treen around them? Well, take the 
children  over there and let them play with the oxen.'
 
"But then people started using 's' instead. And they did some strange things. 
 Like they started using 'chicken' to mean one bird instead of two. It used 
to be  a plural. So you can imagine how confusing it must have been for people: 
"'You see that chicken over there?' 
"'Chicken? There's only one of them. There's one chick.' 
"'No, there's one chicken.' 
"'One... chicken.' 
"'Yes. Well, I want you take it over there and put it with the other  
chickens.' 
"'Chickenen?' 
"Totally confusing for the poor old buggeren. It's as if we suddenly started  
talking about dogses and catses. Or hippopotamuseses." 
"And then there are the plurals like 'mice' and 'geese' and 'feet', where the 
 actual form of the word is changed to show that it's plural. There used to 
be a  lot more of those. My favourite is 'goat'â??if they hadn't started using 
esses for  that one back in the Middle Ages, we'd be talking about flocks of 
geat. 
"You'd have little kids making the same kinds of mistakes they  make with 
'sheep'â??'look at the sheeps, Daddy!'â??but they'd be going 'look at the  
goats, 
Daddy! Look at the goats!' And their dads would be saying, 'Not  goats, son, 
it's geatâ??look at the geat.' 
"What I want to know is, how do these things change? How do you go from one  
chick, two chicken, to one chicken, two chickens? How do you go from geat to  
goats? Who decides these things? I mean, if we started talking about  
hippopotamuseses in serious conversation, people would think we were insane. So 
 
that's why I've got this theory that language change is actually driven by mad  
people. Once upon a time these crazy village idiot types went around saying,  
'Hello, chickens; hello, goats,' and everyone laughed at them and said, 'What a 
 
bunch of dickheaden.' But it was like those really annoying songs on the radio 
 that you can't get out of your headâ??they couldn't forget it. And so they 
started  saying 'chickens' just as a joke, just trying to laugh it off. 
'"Chickens"â??heh  heh heh.' And then they forgot that it was a joke, and 
before long 
they were  using it all the time. 
"And you see this even today. Like, normal human beings say that  something 
will 'have an impact on' something else: 'This tax will have an impact  on our 
lifestyle.' Or, at a pinch, 'This tax will impact upon our lifestyle.'  But 
now, some strange, abnormal human beings are starting to say, 'This tax will  
impact our lifestyle.' Which makes me think of those big machines in junkyards  
which impact the cars by squashing them flat. This tax will press our 
lifestyle  into a flat sheet of metal. 
"Well, if, like me, you find this annoying, just remember that it's mad  
people who are saying this. They're completely nuts. So you don't have to  be 
polite to them when you hear them say it. Don't smile and nod and  act as if 
you 
understand exactly what they mean. Just go up to them and yell,  'Stop being so 
abstruse, you great bunch of geat!'" 
 (http://www.speedysnail.com/standup/ch9.html#3) 
I loved it. The audience didn't. Alan had been met by polite, uncomfortable  
laughter throughout, and went off to a modest round of applause. 
We met him at the bar afterwards. 
"I dunno," he said, "it's so dispiriting. They won't take any risks."  
(Meaning the audience.) "I thought these were uni students. They don't want me, 
 
they want Rodney Rude." 
"It wasn't that bad," said Kath, doing her best to give him a boost. "You got 
 a few laughs." 
"Oh, sure. When I handed them the most obvious lines on a plate, and mugged  
like a lunatic. I want a better reaction than that. A bit of sophistication; a 
 bit of willingness to be taken by surprise. Unless I can go onstage and get 
a  laugh by spontaneously saying 'Burma!', I'm not happy." 
I interrupted him. "Isn't that a bit Python?" 
Alan's whole expression moved from one of despair to one of exasperation.  
"Jesus, Sean, don't you start! Monty Python, Monty Python... if a comedian does 
 
anything even vaguely surreal, it's called 'Pythonesque', like some put-down, 
as  if being compared to the greats is an insult." 
"I didn't mean it like that." 
"Yeah, but can't you see how boring it gets? It used to drive us mad in  
Footlights. Even there, it was all you'd hear. We had to make jokes about it in 
 
self-defence. People don't have any other standard of comparison for comedy, so 
 everything becomes 'a bit Python'. But for Chrissakes, they don't go calling 
 every five-hundred-page novel 'Dickensian' or every three-act play 'a bit  
Shakespeare'!" 
Alan sat there seething for a moment. I ventured an apology. "Sorry, Alanâ??I  
didn't mean to set you off..." 
"Ahh, that's okay. Pet peeve of mine. Forget it." 
"Okay... but what I was starting to say was, didn't Graham Chapman say  
'Burma!' in one of the Python sketches?" 
Alan sat back and smiled sheepishly. 
"Fuck off." 
 (http://www.speedysnail.com/standup/ch9.html#4) 
"Sometimes I wonder why you do it," I said, as I finished off my beer. 
"Do what?" asked Alan. 
"This. Comedy. Sometimes I wonder why you bother." 
"What do you mean? Are you saying I'm no good?" 
"No, no, that's not it. Just thatâ??well, you're obviously smart. You've been  
to Cambridge and all. You could probably do lots of things; serious things.  
Things that could probably make you lots of money, too." 
"Yes, Alan," chuckled Kath, "why don't you make lots of money? That sounds  
like a good idea." 
Alan laughed, and started to sing, "I don't care tooâ??much for money..." 
"Seriously," I said. "Why not become an academic or something? When, like you 
 said, it's so hard to find sophisticated audiences for comedy?" 
Alan sighed. "Yeah," he said, "there's some truth to that. Sometimes I think  
I really would like to try and be an academic or whatever, writing about 
serious  subjects, solving big problems, making a difference in the world. Be 
the 
next  John Locke or Thomas Paine." 
"So why not?" 
"Well, it's not that easy. It's not easy getting an academic job these days,  
for one thing. But it's also like I'm torn. It's like I have this big 
struggle  going on inside me, these two forces pulling in opposite directions. 
Be 
serious,  be a good academic, do something worthwhile. And then, be unserious, 
be 
a  comedian, make people laugh." 
"That's worthwhile," said Kath. "Making people laugh is a serious  business." 
"That's what I tell myself," Alan said. "I just wish everyone else saw it  
that way. It's not like you can't address serious issues through comedy. Lots 
of 
 people do." 
"What," I asked, "like Ben Elton?" 
"Yeah, well, Ben Elton, sure. I don't necessarily mean those kinds of  
clear-cut political issues, though; although that's fine, that's good. I mean  
more 
that if you analyse any comedy you'll find that it's addressing  some issue or 
other, even if it's just, I don't know, the role of the  mother-in-law in 
Western society. I mean, comedy is about putting ordinary  things together in 
extraordinary ways; combining subjects that on their own make  sense but 
together 
make nonsense; which makes you laugh, hopefully. But then the  way you 
combine them has its own sense, its own logic. It says something." 
I pondered on this. "I can see your point," I said. "But can't  that be 
rather limiting? You have to strip away all of the context of the  original 
subjects before you put them together. So people can't see it when  they're 
laughing 
at the joke... If I draw a cartoon about a man on a desert  island I don't 
figure I'm saying anything special; I'm just making a joke." 
---- 
OED on 'children' 
The OE. plural was normally cild; but in late OE. the word  was partly 
assimilated to the neuter -os stems, making nom. pl.  cildru, -ra, and esp. 
gen. pl. 
cildra. Ã?lfric,  Grammar 23, gives nom. cild, gen. cildra, dat.  cildum; but 
he also has nom. cildru (e.g. Hom. II. 324). No  r forms occur in the earlier 
Vesp. Psalter nor in Northumbrian. The  latter had cild and cildo; and 
sometimes made the word masc. with  pl. cildas. In ME. there are rare instances 
of 
chyld,  childe as plural; but the surviving type was OE. cildru,  cildra, which 
gave ME. childre, childer: this was the  regular northern and north midland 
form, and is still used in the dialects as  far south as Shropsh., Leicester, 
and Lincolnsh. But in the south this was made  childer-en, childre-n by 
conformation to the -en plurals:  cf. brethre, brether, brethren, plurals of 
_BROTHER_ 
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/cgi/crossref?query_type=word&;
queryword=child&edition=2e&first=1&max_to_show=10&xref=1&sort_type=alpha&searc
h_id=wM8F-XaLVVI-454&result_place=1&xrefed=OED&xrefword=brother) . This has 
become  the standard and literary form. The Old Northumbrian cildas is 
paralleled  by childes in 15th c., which is exceptional; but the Sc. 
differentiated  
word _CHIELD_ 
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/cgi/crossref?query_type=word&queryword=child&edition=2e&first=1&max_to_show=10&xref=1&sort_type
=alpha&search_id=wM8F-XaLVVI-454&result_place=1&xrefed=OED&xrefword=chield)  
has always  chields in plural.] 

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