(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

weird linguistic quirk i've noticed in Spanish but not in English:

There are nouns which you're only supposed to use in the plural form (Plurale tantum ). Some, like "scissors" or "spectacles", are such because they function in pairs, others, like "electronics", just don't make a lot of sense in singular.

This happens in Spanish too, and many of the examples are the same. Yet one thing I've noticed Spanish speakers do which I haven't in English is deciding "this whole circumlocution talking about 'pairs of scissors' is just pointless. it's a single thing, let's just call it a scissor." and then the plural form and the singular form start coexisting*. I've never noticed this in English, nobody talks about a scissor or an underpant

...except I looked it up in the process of researching this post and and this has totally happened in English some, to words like "calipers" and "compasses", oops. well, forget that I had a point.

*and then sometimes one starts to die off. recently it came up that most of my co-workers were not actually aware that "tijeras" (scissors) and "pantalones" (trousers) can refer to a single thing-you-use-to-cut-paper or single item of clothing, grown too used to saying "tijera" and "pantalón".