The most controversial creature in linguistics

[@Skeleman]

i did a version of the wug test as part of a science project in high school. i went to an elementary school and did a wug test. none of the kids answered correctly but my favorite response to "this is a wug. now there are two of them. there are two ______" was "frens".

[@languagejones6784]

That is so delightful!

[@cfv7461]

maybe friends were the wugs we made along the way

[@dyld921]

None of them answered wugs? What were the "wrong" answers?

[@imacds]

1. wug 2-4. frens 5+. guwi

[@I_Love_Learning]

I learned about the wug test a couple weeks ago, and my automatic intuition was that the plural of wug was wug... I am worse than a 7 year old...

[@bibliophile99]

I immediate said that he "glung." I am so surprised that wasn't the most common response! - - 67-year-old man

[@bibliophile99]

I asked my wife about this and she said "glung" as well - without any hesitation. I wonder is there are any regional differences in this answer.

[@kjn3350]

It's probably the world clung. I also thought of glung, then glinged and only glang when I thought about it like sang or rang.

[@emanym]

It is because sung is the past participle of sing. Technically, it cannot be used in place of sang, but I do it anyway 😊

[@RainbowSprnklz]

i also thought glung! but i realize why glang was more common. Its the ‘he sang’ vs ‘he has/had sung’ kind of thing. The way the question was phased would demand ‘he glang’ not ‘he has/had glung’ Honestly i bet there are regional differences! Or at least like community based differences like if you come from a community or culture where precise grammar is really boiled into how people speak vs one that conjugates way more fluidly/accuracy isnt as important for understanding (ie a lot of rural areas may say ‘he dont’ or ‘i seen’) though just a theory based on where im from!

[@waffling0]

my immediate response was also glung, i was surprised that it wasn't mentioned as an option

[@artie_greene]

it took me the entire video to realize people's basis for changing gling->glang is sing->sang. (maybe others? that is the only example i can think of for some reason) My immediate answer was "he glung" because my mind went to fling->flung. Saying "he glang" feels completely unnatural to me

[@artie_greene]

"glinged" honestly feels the most natural when i think about the kind of action that it is (or might be) but "glung" is where my mind went first

[@davidf3910]

Sing Sang Sung, Ring Rang, Rung. But yeah, new words are totally regular.

[@lemonZzzzs]

Of those two, it's more of a glung to me as well, but because cling -> clung. It's like one little stroke apart. The first thing that actually came to my mind was "glaught" because my mind tends to look for a catch when confronted with a previously unknown concept :D

[@HappilyMundane]

same here, also agree with your second comment

[@robertborland5083]

I also went with "glung" (presumably a past participle). Glung Gang! Glung Gang!

[@iesika7387]

Years ago we had both a linguistics grad student and a very bright labrador retriever in the same household. I taught the lab to fetch or locate objects by name - if she knew the name, she'd select the corresponding thing (fantastic for finding your keys or the remote). So, we did some tests. "Toy" was a category, and all of the dogs stuff was a toy. Within the category of toy, were subcategories of ball, bone, rope, etc. When presented with a pile of stuff she'd never seen before and asked to fetch a ball, bone, or rope, she'd often pick things out by sight - but also would sometimes do tests. If the thing rolled when she pushed it with her nose, that was a ball. If it was nice to chew on that was a bone. Stick seemed to be a subset of bone, but she would pick it last out of various chewable things (with antlers actually being prefered over actual bones). Doing (ethical) science on your pets is fun!

[@MogamiKyoko13]

My childhood golden retriever had different names for all of her toys (her "baby," ball, bone, kong, Timon (like from Lion King), rope, stick, etc) and also could identify and bring various other household items (like mom's vs dad's slippers, or the remote). Retriever dogs are astonishingly smart and, in my experience, are very good problem solvers.

[@Reubentheimitator6572]

I hope my lab mix is clever enough for tricks like that.

[@sarahberlaud4285]

I remember this being asked of us as kids in grade 1 (for fun in the classroom, not as an official study or anything), and my very honest response was, "I don't know, because I don't know that word. Could you teach me?" I'm sure that growing up with more than one language in the home must have impacted my view on the matter, and was probably an early indicator of both my perfectionistic tendencies and my anxiety 😅

[@sarahberlaud4285]

@@CSpottsGaming Well, I know that I have a good grasp of the rules, but it's hard to say where that comes from at this point, as I continued with languages throughout my studies, including my Master's which is in medical research focusing on how the brain learns language (specifically secondary and tertiary acquisition). That sounds like I'm flexing, but honestly it's just to give context (and it sounds more impressive than it is, honestly, lol). It's just my intuition, but I feel like just by knowing that there ARE rules to any language (and to all languages), it makes learning new languages easier. I know that, scientifically, that elasticity makes a positive impact on pronunciation, for example. By understanding (in a subconscious brain sense rather than just a conscious knowing sense) that there are different sound sets available than just the one of your first language, your brain can more easily pick up any new phonemes/sounds, even if they don't exist in any of the languages you do speak. I think that likely extends to other language aspects, like grammar. I'm not sure how important it is to know the absolute correct grammar for speaking and writing - personally I think that effective communication is much more important. But by knowing the rules, you're given the power of choice (like code-switching). That can open up a lot of doors...

[@blotski]

I remember my daughter in her early years used to use irregular past tenses quite well saying things like 'I saw', 'I thought'. We thought she was a genius. Later on she started getting them wrong and saying 'I seed' and 'I thinked'. It's like as soon as she worked out the rule she started applying it to everything rather than imitating what she heard. My son was a great one for making up words and phrases. He called helicopters 'copterplanes' or sometimes 'aerocopters' (we say 'aeroplane' in the UK rather than 'airplane'), trampolines were 'bouncealines' and he invented the word 'lasterday' for 'the other day, recently'.

[@oraldogoncalves8791]

'Lasterday' reminds me of 'isturdia' which is a (probably very regional) way of saying 'outro dia' meaning 'the other day' in Portuguese

[@JoseHiggor]

​@@oraldogoncalves8791isso é negocio de Portugal ou Brasil? Nordestino aqui e nunca ouvi essa expressão.

[@FlorianBaumann]

Lasterday sounds ingenious. English definitely needs this word!

[@nicholasfairhurst356]

If you don't mind, I will be using "lasterday" in my everyday vocabulary now. Thanks so much to you and your child!

[@joadbreslin5819]

Lasterday "gling" was such an easy word to say. Now all my wugs have flown away.

[@zak3744]

Nah, he glinged. I was quite surprised when you said "glang" was in the majority. New words normally get the regular form.

[@iantino]

Not only that, irregular forms are most associated with more used verbs so, the rarer, most regular.

[@itisALWAYSR.A.]

yeah, same

[@someknave]

Yup, the problem with glang doesn't even stop there. I don't think that it's even the most common irregular form glung seems more likely to me. But definitely glinged is the most likely. Weird as an opening example.

[@caller145]

As a non-native English speaker who said "glinged" I feel a bit better now

[@emperorarima3225]

I heard "cling" so i said "clung" 😂

[@leppur6573]

My problem with Gleason is her sending emails to linguistics students threatening legal action if they didn't stop using the wugs. Also the wug being a linguistic stimulus raises weird questions when it comes to copyright as science needs to be replicatable.

[@gillablecam]

Doing science with copyrighted material is fairly common - in any study of dementia, for example, a common form of neurocognitive testing that gets widely used is the MOCA (Montreal something something), which is copyrighted. The scientists have to pay for training in it and for access to copies in order to consider it a valid measurement. The training is understandable, but it's still a financial barrier to science.

[@lyrablack8621]

​@@gillablecamMontreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)

[@clawtooth35]

yeah this is what I recall as well -- I remember there being some stress about her stopping student linguistics societies from using the Wug as a mascot/logo - even when they weren't making money from it.

[@ronald3836]

I agree. No company will make any substantial amount of money from a mug with a wug, but producing and selling such mugs will create at least a bit of extra interest in her work.

[@ronald3836]

There is also the question whether she owns the copyright at all. If she ever included the drawing in an academic paper, she probably transferred the copyright on the paper, including the copyright on the wug, to the publisher. Also, she produced the drawing in the course of her academic work, which was funded by public money.

[@hurricaneomega]

I distinctly remember being given a similar test in preschool. When asked what a grocer does, I said "He grosses people out."

[@XatxiFly]

wonderful answer hahaha

[@76rjackson]

My son was somewhere between 2 and 3 when I caught him, in deep focused concentration, disassembing my little battery powered nose hair trimmer. He'd gotten it pretty well destroyed but had a few potentially functional pieces still in hand and he was so intently focused upon his work prying pieces apart that he failed to notice my approach. "Ah, what cha doing there, champ?" I queried. Instantly, his little body convulsed in a spasm of guit. The last pieces fell into the pile strewn about his little feet as the reaction reached his hands and he blurted out in his perfectly fluent toddler grammar, "i didn't didded it!" I had to laugh as i picked him up and contradicted him, saying, mirroring his language, " You did, too, didded it! I caught you red handed" Just one of many fond memories of raising that rascal.

[@benenwren4110]

Reminds me of when I was little. I thought the phrase "on purpose" meant the same thing as "on accident", so I would get upset and say "But I did it on purpose!" when I got in trouble. And when I started learning the difference I would say things like "It was on purpose - I mean it was an accident!"

[@lhwheeler1]

I treated "gling" like any other "foreign" word brought into English recently and made the past tense "glinged."

[@donnaroberts281]

Same. Second choice was “glung”.

[@steffenbendel6031]

@@donnaroberts281 glung seems to be German influence.

[@NoNameAtAll2]

@@donnaroberts281 gling - glang - glung

[@Numbabu]

It was the only thing that occured to me

[@chrismartinez5711]

Yep, me too. I'm glinger and I glinged rather quickly. I think it sounds kinda of onomatopoetic, like ping or ding.

[@warrenrexroad1172]

My son didn't really start talking until he was about 18 months old, now he just turned 5 and constantly asks for the reason things are named the way they are (e.g. "Why is it called a 'house'?"). It seems like he really enjoys thinking about words. My daughter on the other hand started talking before she was 1 and was spontaneously telling stories about made up characters by the time she was 2, yet she has never outwardly shown any interest is words or language. It's really interesting watching them develop in such different ways.

[@chri-k]

So there seems to be a correlation between starting to speak later and being interested in language

[@Killer_Space_2726-GCP]

My kids are similar, but I lend that to the fact my boy effectively teaches her how to behave, and she learns the actions. She watches him play with trains and make sounds and characters, so she will do the same with different things.

[@koibubbles3302]

@@chri-kit’s impossible to infer such a thing from two children, but it would be interesting to look into. I like linguistics but I started speaking quite early.

[@koibubbles3302]

@@chri-kmaybe children who speak later are more introspective or perfectionist (if it is possible for an infant to be such things) which causes them to be more interested in why things are called what and would also cause them to speak later when they think they’ve “got it down”

[@Loctorak]

​​​@@koibubbles3302why would it not be possible for an infant to be introspective or a perfectionist? 🤔 To clarify, perhaps their sense of what "perfect" is wouldn't match what is generally considered perfection, but I don't see why an infant couldn't have a compulsion to do things until they meet their idea of perfection. Similarly, an introspective infant may not have any ground breaking revelations or even know what it's doing, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be prone to considering their own actions and simple thoughts. Even to just consider and become aware of themselves as an individual with agency and choice that can affect things around them could be considered introspective IE "i did that" or "what if i did this differently" An infant that wasn't introspective likely wouldn't think about their own actions and thoughts unless pushed, thinking instead in external terms IE "you did this" and "what they could have done differently".

[@sophiesong8937]

I'm an English speaker, my children have been raised with Korean as their first language. I remember my son, at about age 2-3 was starting to learn a few English words, and he developed a rule, that English nouns have 's' on the end. So when he tried to communicate with my mum, he would say English nouns he knew, and also convert Korean nouns to English by adding 's' (eg. 사과 ('sa-gwa' apple) becomes 사과s ('sa-gwas')

[@caller145]

For the longest time while learning English I assigned extra meaning to the articles "a" and "an". Basically I thought I would use "an" whenever I would use partitive case in my native language xD I don't know how that rule came to be

[@solsystem1342]

This had "adding -o to words to make them Spanish" vibes and it's even funnier when it's about your language.

[@sophiesong8937]

@solsystem1342 it's my language, but my son was not receiving direct English input at this age, except in annual visits from my mum. So he was a Korean speaker trying to figure out how English worked

[@proloycodes]

​@@caller145what's partitive case?

[@admiraloverdone]

That's really cute ;-;

[@fjordojustice]

"It's called thanksgiving because you eat lots of turkey" is literally (figuratively) the cutest thing I've ever heard.

[@matthewclements3476]

In the UK they had formal assessments based on ‘alien words’ (I don’t know if they still do). At my daughters school a bunch of parents were irate because their children came home upset that they had failed a test for which there was technically no correct answers.

[@dactylntrochee]

I had two observations of a related phenom over the years. In the '70s, I dabbled in the study of Japanese. Upon learning the word for the noun "sock" (k'tsush'ta), I said to my mentor "Oh, I see. Undershoe". After all, k[u]tsu = shoe and sh[i]ta = under. It was quite clear to me upon hearing the word, but caught my native-speaking mentor off-guard. He had never parsed the sound into components, and was amazed that in all of his years, he hadn't noticed this simple reality. He just heard the word and recognized its identity as a knitted foot garment. (I found this doubly fascinating, since the written form was probably not written in their phonetic alphabet, but in a pair of Chinese characters that would make the compound obvious.) This spring (2023), while speaking to a francophone, I said that I like the way her language developed words with a French feeling, so rather than forming "computeur" for our "computer", as do the other romance languages, they created "ordenateur", or "device that puts things in order." Again, the derivation was instantly clear to me, but it came as a revelation to her -- for whom it was an already-complete sound that needed no explanation or further examination. (That's the task for the non-speaker who's grappling with sounds to make sense of them.) The amazing form of mental telepathy we call language is a device that works pretty well, but is only a kind of messenger RNA whose task is to replicate the thought in one person's mind in that of another. It's not the thing itself, just a good-enough-for-now approximator. (Gee! I knew how to form "approximator", and everyone knows what it means.) But, we're so facile with it, that we forget that that's all it is. One of my favorite sticking points comes when I ask someone "Does your use of the word 'should' represent a statistical probability or a moral imperative?" (I know this to be true in both Romance and Germanic. I don't know about the other Indo-Euros.) As before, I'm always amazed that people don't generally notice the sloppiness of this particular word. Language gets its job done, but we only "get by", never noticing how dicey it really is. Anything beyond "Please pass the salt" or "Fill 'er up, regular" can -- and often is -- interpreted by the listener differently from the intention of the speaker. It's a miracle we get anything done at all!

[@F_A_F123]

A fun thing I noticed about a word in my native language. So, the word is podborodok, it means chin and only not long ago I noticed that that word literally means 'under beard (thing)' (pod- is prefix meaning 'under' (tho it can mean other thinks), borod is the root of the word meaning 'beard', and -ok is just a suffix (without it there wouldn't be a valid word)

[@dactylntrochee]

@@F_A_F123 Ha! That's a good one, and led me on some travels. First, I couldn't help but notice the similarity between "borod" and "beard". Germanic uses the same consonants. Somehow, the Romances use "barb", which leads to some interesting discoveries that are too long for this note. Then, there was my guess from the sound of the whole word that your language is Russian or Ukranian or one of the other northeastern languages. That led me to think of the Soviet statesman Nicolai Podgorny. What, I asked, could be the meaning of "gorny"? So, I looked it up in Russian and, sure enough, his family name seems to be "under the mountain". (We have names like Unterberg and Underhill.) Anyway, that led me to think of the name of the Russian-born American composer Jay Gorney (who wrote "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?"). His name was shortened upon arrival here from Gornitzky. I already knew that the eastern sky/ski/ska form indicated relation or proximity, so I guess his European name meant "of or near the mountain." Of course, all of this is off the topic at hand -- that is, not noticing the elements of words we use daily -- but my ear is unrelenting in poking me into looking into the origin of any sound I hear, especially when part of a compound. Thanks for the new insight. Now I'll know the word for "chin" (declensions not included) for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think my compulsion is a little pathological, but it sure is fun.

[@88marome]

It’s the same with my native language, Swedish. When I see videos about our strange idioms I get surprised at myself for not realizing that the combinations of words ate really odd.

[@lyrablack8621]

It's "ordinateur", and i would say "approximater", not "approximator" - although, upon typing, i'm having second thoughts, but i feel it's important to trust one's instincts/go with one's gut. Anyway, yes, i understood what you meant either way, which proves your point. Unfortunately i can't remember anything from my dabbles in languages as a native english speaker to add to the discussion (although i'm sure you'll trust they're there), but i will say that in my youth and ignorance, when my political opinions were far more inconsiderate and simple, i used to be quite the "grammar Nazi" - which, as it turns out, isn't actually all that far off from actual Nazis; and once i realized that, i did nearly everything in my power to distance myself from it. I've always been fascinated by communication in all its forms (from language to skin creases to art), because it really is so vague, and it's a wonder how anything ever gets across to anyone at all (which digs up the video essay _The Art of Semantics_ by AnRel - which i highly recommend); but as facts often converge to best make sense of/prop up one's preexisting thoughts, feelings, actions; and as i've never really bought into the distinction between "intention" and "outcome", i wonder how much it matters that my intention now, in correcting you, isn't about superiority, but rather in attempting to tightrope across the thin strand of message bordered on all sides by an endless abyss of ambiguity and nonsense.

[@dactylntrochee]

@@lyrablack8621 Exactly. As you said, "and it's a wonder how anything ever gets across to anyone at all" I often think that before entering any conversation of importance, participants should have a glossary, complete with definitions, citations of current and historical use, etymologies, variants, etc. Sure, I'll go with approximater". That looks a little nicer. I maintain my own inner grammar Nazi status when there's an issue of clarity or ambiguity. Pronouns almost never bother me, since "Him good man" is clear and unambiguous. BUT, typical pet peeves arise when meaning is distorted. Consider the lyric from the Beatles "If I Fell", where the narrator says "I must be sure form the very start that you would love me more than her." I hold that "her" is, (dare I say it?) wrong. It's really got to be "she". The other pronoun has a different meaning entirely -- one that was taboo in 1965. Of course, in 1965, since the taboo was in place, the listener's imagination could automatically correct the error just as easily as our brains right the upside-down visual signal delivered by the eyes. But today, either meaning is valid. The proper pronoun really should (IMHO) be used in this case. BTW, on a related topic, I like having a gender-neutral pronoun when appropriate, and "they" does the trick. BUT, if one uses it for a single person of indeterminate sex, the verb still has to be conjugated correctly. (And it's not like we have so many conjugations to deal with in English.) Thus, "Every individual wore their coat" is fine, but "Every individual can do as they wishes" is necessary. You can say "...as he wishes" in the monastery, and "...as she wishes" in the convent, but at the movies, it's got to be "...as they wishes". Alas, my thoroughly unscientific testing of this principle tells me it's never going to happen. I'm also a stickler for word appropriation. I remember when "holocaust" was applied to any cataclysmic burning, but now it has become a specific one. The same happened to "catholic", but it doesn't rankle me so badly, since that one happened before I was born. A current pet peeve is the replacement of the word "religion" with "faith". In my ear, those are two different things, though one relies on the other. Dropping one and replacing it with the other smells of newspeak to me. We used to have two, nuanced terms, now we have only one fuzzy blob. Generally speaking, if there's no ambiguity, I still speak as I think will make the most sense to the ears I'm addressing, but I don't correct other people; there's downside but nothing to be gained.

[@teucer915]

Berko didn't renew copyright, nor did the journal in which she published her designs. That was required to keep it at that time. They are public domain. Her C&D letters have no legal foundation. But they still have a *moral* foundation. Asking nicely first, in both directions, would have been the right thing to do.

[@NuncNuncNuncNunc]

More typically the student holds the copyright to their dissertaion. The Wugs in question were copyrighted in 2006.

[@teucer915]

@@NuncNuncNuncNunc which is after the copyright on the original paper had expired (unless they were renewed, which nobody has produced evidence of). The 2006 re-drawing of the wug is under copyright, and will be for the next hundred years, but drawing your own wug based on the original isn't an infringement on that, and even directly using the original isn't, because the original drawings are now public domain. Nonetheless, the people who started selling wug merchandise because they were *legally* in the clear, were still using the work of Berko without permission. The right thing to do would have been to ask permission first. And the right response when they didn't would've been to politely ask them to stop, rather than have lawyers advance a legally indefensible position. It is much better to have a respectful dialogue and bring in lawyers when that fails rather than to start with "well what does the law let me get away with." Had it been started that way, we might have seen a much wider array of cool wug merchandise than Berko now offers, with a cut going her way by prior agreement.

[@AeonKnigh432]

She did. He literally said in the video, she asked people to stop making money off of her work

[@teucer915]

@@AeonKnigh432 my understanding is that she "asked" that through demand letters signed by lawyers.

[@teucer915]

I would like for her to have handled it differently, especially since the law doesn't really support her position. I still think she's right, no matter how she approaches the issue.

[@luizotavio2116]

As a non-native speaker, I just used the -ed version for all the verbs. That is something new learners do a lot when they aren't sure about the past tense of a verb, just guessing that it's a regular verb is much easier than guessing what random form of irregularity is the right one 😂

[@ssharkey]

Pretty solid strategy. You might not be saying things correctly, but people will understand what you mean

[@werewolf74]

I keep adding to a list of abreviated words. Im mildly obsessed with it. Many of the words can only be like 1 thing especially in context. caush - caution obvi - obvious deets - Details Cazz - Casual presh - pressure Sitch - Situation Fam - Family Mome - moment totes - totally

[@victoriagolden4233]

When I first started teaching little kids, it threw me off that my etymological explanations didn’t stick, but they preferred explanations like “because a quarter note is filled in black.” Very insightful!

[@Loctorak]

All well and good, children, until we meet the eighth note! 😮

[@unvergebeneid]

Something tells me I would've been the annoying kid to point out your explanation makes no sense 😅

[@orion6able]

so, my first thought was "glung" then went to "glinged", for a mini one I guessed "wugy" and for a wug house, I guessed "den" because, I really should have guessed nest but somehow I imagined it they built a structure we'd call it a den like wolves live in. Fun to note in my other language if we could pronounce wug, would be "ugwug" said like "oog-wug" because the root is copied and w gets reduced to a vowel, usually animals don't need plurals though.

[@razzle_dazzle]

That's interesting... what's your other language? And what do you mean by *_if_* you could pronounce "wug"? Surely "ugwug" is harder to pronounce than "wug", or is my ignorance showing?

[@thomasmacdiarmid8251]

Obviously a wug should live in a wugwam

[@OldSchoolLPsGames]

For what it's worth, I think a small wug ought to be a wiggle. But I also think they just live in a house, which is rather unoriginal.

[@mrpacifism209]

me, a 22 year old adult feels PERSONALLY attacked because i shouted out to my computer screen, "GLINGED!! HE GLINGED!!!!!" only to find out IM in the minority yeah right pffffft

[@kathleenyes-cp2uf]

I’m with you

[@bocked_mod]

I mean if you ping someone you didn't pang them, also I fully agree with glinged.

[@Kram1032]

You are not at all in the minority judging by this comment section. You would have been in the minority *back when the study was done* like 50 years ago or something.

[@a-s-greig]

​@@bocked_mod never on a first date

[@razzle_dazzle]

@@bocked_mod Ping is unusual though. The more usual pattern is like in sing/sang/sung, ring/rang/rung, and (the similar) drink/drank/drunk.

[@michaellay7164]

The Ka-choo thing is so adorable, and literally made me chuckle even before you said one of the adults said the same thing.

[@invisableumbrella]

Felt very validated that “glang” was the most common. Very interesting video, I will check out more from you

[@jcc195]

i assume you know, but i'll point out that "rizz" is not a nonsense word anymore, having gained meaning as a shortening of "charisma" in a romantic/sexual sense (~synonymous & analogous to "game")

[@tim1724]

"Gling" sounds like a strong verb so I'd suspect either "glang" or "glung" by analogy with "sing" or "cling". ("Bring" is its own odd accident of history and I wouldn't expect anything else to resemble it. And children tend not to either, as evidenced by the extremely common "brung" form that anyone who spends time around young children will have repeatedly encountered.) Of course strong verbs in English tend to become weak verbs over time, and that goes double for obscure verbs, so it's probably more reasonable to expect that any verb you've never encountered before is probably a weak verb. With fewer than 200 strong verbs remaining in English, one is unlikely to encounter new ones past the age of five or six, so older children (and adults) probably ought to assume an unknown verb is weak, so it should be "glinged" like "dinged" (although it seems like there are barely any weak verbs that end in "-ing", now that I think about it.)

[@NoNameAtAll2]

irregular verbs are somehow strong?

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

@@NoNameAtAll2 yes. It's just that when English loaned a bunch of verbs from French and Latin, it used the weak form for all of them (because it sounded closer to French/Latin past participle) making it the new default in English due to how disproportionately frequent it became after being applied to so many new words. Therefore, any previously strong verb that wasn't used extremely frequently ended up losing one or both its pasts and using the weak form instead.

[@Acidlib]

Yeah, my first guess was glung

[@ZoeTeresa1]

I said glung. I think this would be the most common choice for British English speakers.

[@Kram1032]

@@NoNameAtAll2 they are kinda "strong" in that they "stick to the old ways" They tend to be more common verbs where you are more likely to hear the (irregular) past tense quite often. Which is why words like "have" or "be" are particularly likely to remain irregular for a long time. The rarer "strong" verbs, however, slowly drift into what currently is deemed "regular". (Who knows, maybe there will be another shift at some point and we'll suddenly start shifting away from the current regular form too) I think a similar phenomenon exists in other languages

[@Gamesaucer]

For English I'd say "glang", but for my native Dutch if asked the same question, I would say "glong"/"geglongen".

[@wirrbel]

klingen, klang, geklungen in German

[@ak5659]

I'd forgotten about wugs completely. So my first impulse was 'wuggen' because it's obviously a word of Germanic origin. 😂😂 But don't mind me. I once stared at a page in a Kraków phone book for a full minute before figuring out why there were so many people with the bizarre Polish surname of .... Szulc.

[@Volundur9567]

I went German with that one.

[@LolUGotBusted]

@@ak5659 'seam'? I'm not following.. I'd be staring blankly also

[@ak5659]

@@LolUGotBusted -- It's a Polish transliteration of 'Schultz'

[@nealjroberts4050]

I chose "glinged" because it sounded like a noise word like "ping" and "ding". Wug, wugs, wugget (like nugget), wughouse (like doghouse) though a large group one would be a wuggery (rookery, cattery) Seeing people's explanations is often more revealing than assumptions

[@acookie7548]

i thought wuglet like piglet

[@grahamexeter3399]

My little wug was automatically a wugling, like duckling.

[@robertlewis6915]

Wugget is a good one.

[@blobberberry]

Gon' need that trunc vid, bro. Any topic presented by an expert - especially someone whose presentation styles are this great - is welcome! Subscribed.

[@scrappedmetal]

when i was learning to write (maybe 1st grade?) i would purposefully write words with no spaces between them because my understanding of compound words was that sometimes adults would write two related words without a space to be fancy. i kinda wish i was able to study my logic from back then. how related did two words have to be for me to decide they could be a compound word?

[@frankhooper7871]

I remember being presented with a similar process at a "language day" in 1968 when I was a high school junior. We were introduced to "rules" of a made-up language and had to apply them to extrapolated situations. A perhaps interesting tangential factoid: in English, we have know/knew, blow/blew, grow/grew - but snow/snowed. In the Suffolk dialect the past tense of snow is snew (likewise, the past tense of show is shew)

[@clawtooth35]

I wonder if that's a feature where those words have resisted change to the standard -s; or if it's an overextension of the ablaut plural. My own variety has a few examples of this too, like "ping/pung" and "jump/jamp".

[@Kram1032]

It snew like crazy last winter

[@pierreabbat6157]

"Snow" is originally a strong verb. However, "jump:jamp" does not follow an inherited pattern - it's by analogy with "run:ran", whose infinitive was originally "rinnen".

[@camelopardalis84]

@frankhooper7871 Nice tidbit - but not a factoid. A factoid is - per definition - an untrue thing.

[@joadbreslin5819]

@@camelopardalis84 Not per the most common usage in American English. Beware linguistic prescriptivism.

[@czyko]

He "glung" or "glinged"

[@EchoLog]

I said "he had glung"

[@ChrissyOneMusic]

Squarely in camp “glung.”

[@Shack263]

I'm just a layman, so I had to do a double take on glang or glung. I initially agreed and thought "He glung". Now I get the distinction, for example "he glang" vs "he had glung". It's like glang is for active voice and glung is for passive voice (and also whatever just happened there). So many weird things happen automatically yet I can't consciously describe them!

[@EchoLog]

@@Shack263 interesting even further; It sounds the most right to me this way: He glings, he will gling, he glang, he had glung. Active/passive completely aside, perfective "had" prescribes I round out the ablout system with "glung". Also "he had glang" or "he glanged" both sound wrong. Not just preferential, like they sound like a different lexical set. Which makes ZERO sense.

[@czyko]

@@EchoLog interestingly this is congruent with "to swim" He swims, he will swim, he swam, he had swum

[@ScherrHrenner]

I studied linguistics in Germany, have a master's degree in it, have been obsessed with linguistics since my youth, but never encountered a wug until I joined r/linguistics, where they use the bird as a mascot. Your video was the first time I ever heard of the study or of the bird being used as a mascot for linguistics (it seems to be non-existant in Germany).

[@punkykenickie2408]

Well, in German wugs are called wuggen. Or wuggenen. Or wueg. Wuggs? Wueggen? (j/k, I assume native German speakers can cope with the varying plural forms even if I cant)

[@ScherrHrenner]

@@punkykenickie2408 Since it's an English sounding term, I'd intuitively go for "Wugs."

[@jamieemerson2741]

As an UG I recorded interviews with my cousin’s kids, aged 3 and 6. The aim was to look at their “sensitivity to the productivity of options in the target language” and whether they used the suffix “er” to create novel nouns for the ‘people who do X’ (as in teacher, driver, singer, runner and so on). 15 years later and “Pick nose boy” still makes me smile.

[@Jimmy-H]

God I love these videos. Your passion is always apparent, and I enjoy your delivery.

[@tobybartels8426]

I'm surprised that the majority said ‘glang’. I did think of that, but my answer is ‘glinged'. (Sorry, I didn't make a comment before watching another minute.) Irregular words may come in patterns, but they're still irregular. Rarely used irregular words often become regular over time (and they don't even have to be that rare, like how ‘holp’ became ‘helped’). New words, if they're not built on old roots, naturally start out regular. This is a new word, certainly to me and probably to the language since I have an extensive vocabulary (and if not new then quite rare), so the past tense is by default ‘glinged’. ETA: I checked with my 7-year-old, and she said ‘wugs’ and ‘glinged’.

[@JimCullen]

I wonder if the fact that the original study was from the '50s makes a difference here. Maybe the evolution of the language in the nearly 65 years since the study was done. It could also be a regional thing? Without any academic explanation for why this is the case, "glang" _feels_ much more American to me, while "glinged" feels more like standard English. The study seems to have been conducted with students from schools in Massachusetts, while I am _not_ American and chose "glinged".

[@tobybartels8426]

@@JimCullen : I'm American too, FWIW.

[@beezany]

I had the same reaction! Strong verbs are a closed class, and I probably already know all of them, so my inclination is to conjugate this as a regular verb.

[@robertborland5083]

I almost went with "glung" (presumably a past participle).

[@mjb7015]

It's funny, I will die on the hill of 'dove' rather than 'dived', but I absolutely hate 'drug' in place of 'dragged'.

[@wilaustu]

Glinged felt natural to me. Not totally sure why, but maybe this could be the reason: evren though many "ing" become "ang", there's also "dinged" and "sung". Maybe since there are real "_ing"verbs that can be conjugated differently, I was able to feel comfortable using the standard "-ed" ending. Also, I think the pronunciation of "glang" feels awkward/uncomfortable compared to "gling"

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

sung IS the gling glang pattern i sing i sang i have sung but I agree my first thought was cling, which has both a regular and irregular form I cling I clung/clinged I have clung The regular form is nonstandard but it was my first thought

[@wilaustu]

F@@matteo-ciaramitaro Good point. I don't know where my head was at with the "sung" thing.

[@hircenedaelen]

Same

[@Jestokost]

As another commenter pointed out, it may be that your brain treated it as a new addition to the English language, and not just a new word *to you.* Very, very few new English words (especially loan words from other languages) get non-standard derivatives. They’re basically all -s plurals and -ed past-tenses.

[@mjb7015]

I want to say glung rather than glang. To my ear, a glang is the noun form - either the person who glung, or the tool used to gling. Edit: a strong second contender for me would be glōng (long/stressed o): think dive/dove, smite/smote, drive/drove, etc)

[@erictaylor5462]

My family was friends with a family from the Netherlands. Their eldest sone was about the same age as my sister and I and when he was 11 (I was 12 and my sister was 10) they sent the boy to stay with us over the summer. The catch was, he did not speak English, and none of us spoke Dutch. I remember this summer as just a really good time. But looking back, I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been for him. Here he is, an unaccompanied minor flying thousands of miles (or kilometers) from home to meet people he had never seen before and none there spoke Dutch. Any worries he might have had were quickly dispelled. Very quickly us kids fell in together and despite the language barrier we were all able to make ourselves understood. Even more amazing is the speed with which he learned English. Within the first week he could get the general idea of what was being said to him, and he could speak enough English to give us a general idea of what he wanted to say. In 2 weeks he was becoming proficient in English. And by the end of the summer he was speaking American English with almost no accent. This was a bit of a problem for him once school started again. Kids in his grade would begin English lessons. He was ready to skip the basics and head right into the advanced English classes. After he was speaking almost perfect English. He was sent home from his first English class with a not stating he had repandly tried to correct the teacher with this horrible version of American English, but she (the teacher) was determined to teach the students proper, British English. There were some mistakes and miscommunications. We took him camping in Oregon, to a camp ground I had been going to for many years. I taught him to fish, and the fishing was fantastic. In no time we had caught our limit, then I told him we had to clean the fish. He was a bit confused because we had just taken the fish out of the nice clean river and we were taking them to a pond full of salamanders to "clean" them. It made no sense to him, but he figured things would be made clear as I showed him how to clean the fish. I showed him how to make sure the fish was dead (it would be horrible to clean the fish alive) then I used my knife to slit the belly of the fish open. I heard a rustling and looked. He was gone. He told me later that he had never expected my to cut the fish open and got sick even before he started running away. I don't know if this was his first encounter with a seemingly familiar word that had a very different meaning in that context, but it was certainly the most memorable. I'm not sure he ever did clean any fish, but he loved catching them and eating them.

[@mrjones2721]

To be fair to the poor kid, my American-born suburban butt would have made for the trees too. I didn’t know what cleaning fish meant until at least my late teens because my family wasn’t into fishing. The rest of it sounds amazing. Do you know what accent he finally ended up with? It can be hard to maintain one accent when your school teaches another.

[@koenahn]

In Dutch we would call what you did to the fish “schoonmaken” which is the most direct translation for “cleaning” that I can think of.

[@erictaylor5462]

@@mrjones2721 He still speaks English with a Central California accent.

[@erictaylor5462]

@@koenahn All I know is, he did not expect me to do that to the fish. I can see how it could induce nausea. I never enjoyed toing it either. Also, Mr. Jones, he'd never been fishing before. I had to teach him, but he loved it. And enjoyed the fish fry later. He never did clean any of the fish on that trip though.

[@tairneanaich]

The fish thing is so familiar- when I told my then girlfriend I‘d dress the rabbits for dinner (I used to hunt with my dad, gf was very much a city person) she was Very Confused. Especially when I produced a knife

[@RobespierreThePoof]

I think some mass produxed ceramic wugs in the German garden gnome style would be excellent merch, by the way. I got a friend a heavily ironic housewarming gift of a garden gnome who was drinking heavily, smoking a fat spliff and mooning everyone. But an unexpected wug in the bushes would be far cooler

[@markkennedy9767]

Isn't this just why young kids say brang instead of brought. I would have thought this wouldn't be that surprising a finding. Edit: I love those private meanings of words.

[@clawtooth35]

Love this video! I remember at the time there was some controversy that Gleeson wasn't going to let *anyone* use the wug, even under fair use. I think that's what had people annoyed. But it was a few years ago and I can't remember the exact arguments from the other side.

[@johnpassaniti4417]

I asked ChatGPT the following: Me: I have a blurg. Now I have two. I have two _______ (fill in the blank). ChatPT: blurgs. Me: John is great at veezing. He does it every day. Yesterday he _____ (fill in the blank). ChatGPT: veezed. Me: Bob and Jack like to verp each other. When they are ______, they can't be stopped (fill in the blank). ChatGPT: verping And yes, I know that ChatGPT (and systems like it) work by extracting patterns in language. It's fascinating to see how children react to these questions, but to me, it's even more fascinating that ChatGPT is doing something similar... maybe. And now, please excuse me because my husband and I are going to verp each other until we pass out.

[@Kram1032]

I think these particular questions would already work with a much much weaker, smaller language model than ChatGPT

[@juicyboxesxo]

thanks, im gonna use verp that way all the time now.

[@Volundur9567]

Bork, borking, borked

[@stratonikisporcia8630]

Clearly John voze

[@snoochh]

Who cares

[@danielrhouck]

The word in the paper I find most interesting is the one they called “*quirks”. As far as I can tell, that was already a word with approximately its modern meaning (as was the adjective they called “*quirky”) before the test; they just had not heard of it.

[@safebox36]

As a UK native English speaker, I said glinged. I was taught that -ang and -t past tense verbs were irregulars only used for some specific words that originally were -ing but evolved over time beyond their original incorporation from other languages.

[@AmyKozerski]

What would you call a house that a wug lives in? - - A wugwam.

[@joadbreslin5819]

Nice!

[@SlimThrull]

Glinged? Maybe glanged, but I suspect the first is better. It really depends on what language the word came from since you're making it up, any past tense will work. Edit: Glang? Really? Why would we assume it's an irregular verb when most verbs are regular? Also, the plural of "Moose" is "Meese". And, yes, I realize I'm technically wrong about this. But good luck trying to stop me from saying "Meese".

[@ItsAsparageese]

Big fan of saying "meese" myself. Silliness is important and language prescriptivism has no business trying to keep us from popularizing silly words lol

[@twopoles11]

Why hello, fellow meese enjoyer 😎

[@Kram1032]

It's clearly Gooses and Meese. The only correct way to do it :D

[@joadbreslin5819]

I love meese to pieces.

[@ak5659]

Why 'glang'? I suspect most one-syllable English verb esp those with in(g/k) are strong verbs. There's also the whole thing of one syllable tending to be basic human activities not requiring tools, which is likely to be the case when drawing stick figures (or close to). It's a chain of 'which is more likely, A or B?'. This has a name but grad school was a very long time ago..... Sorry😢.

[@joshuahudson2170]

The biggest problem we've been having is "What is the plural of caboose?" Both "cabooses" and "cabeese" have appeared in our club. The problem running it back to see which construction to use is we find it's linguistically already plural (from kaboodle; indefinite plural of cooking pot).

[@wotchermystic2335]

I associate -oose/-eese with animals, so my instinct is to say cabooses. What do train enthusiasts & industry folks say?

[@joshuahudson2170]

@@wotchermystic2335 I've heard both from two different enthusiasts.

[@a-s-greig]

There can only be one caboose per train, so that's fairly easy to avoid. If you so happen to be part of a company that specializes in caboose-making, odds are that you have built several caboose(s) in your time. Hard drop the 's' and it still works out, I think.

[@Loctorak]

Cabeese is 100% wrong, but I love it so much that it's what I use. ❤

[@zrebbesh]

"Now there are two of them. There are two ....." Best answer: "U+238E Hysteresis Symbols"

[@drelyka]

Hi! I’ve just discovered your channel and I’m currently working through all the videos. This video made me wonder if you’ve ever done a video on what I call “family words” whether created or repurposed. For example in my family we used “coo” instead of “quilt”. This wasn’t a mispronunciation from my sister or I but rather something inherited from my father who could not pronounce quilt as a child. We also used “messages” as in “I have to DO some messages” meaning to run errands outside of the home (like going to the grocery store or post office). If you haven’t done a video like this, could you? Thanks for the great videos. I’m learning alot.

[@dogsandbicycles]

I'm of the firm opinion that in German it is ein Wug, zwei Wüge. And a small Wug would be a Wügchen (a Wügle in southern Germany).

[@jana_t]

And a Wügli in Swiss German. How cute. 🥰

[@unvergebeneid]

Funny thing is that in German, the plural might be debatable but the diminutive is perfectly regular. In English it's the other way around. The wuglet construction is borrowed from French for example.

[@elrikstronginthearm9267]

as a southern german i would had called a small Wug a "Wügerl". Maybe Wügle is more franconian and Wügerl more bavarian.

[@boxsterman77]

@@elrikstronginthearm9267not wugchen?

[@elrikstronginthearm9267]

@@boxsterman77 nah. -chen is the way the diminutiv is build in "standart" german but the second main way would be -lein and some dialects have forms of either one of these two ways sometimes more or sometimes less far away from their root with things like -ken, -ke, -jen, -je apparently being related to -chen in northern germany and things like -le, -la, -erl, -l being related to -lein in southern germany. Though some of these are kind of falling out of use. Further findings: one source i found said that one dialect region apparently doesn't use diminutives a whole lot and that one region apparently uses -ing but i don't know any closer details about that. Apparently the thing where the a, u, o or au vocal in the main sylable becomes an Umlaut if it isn't one already (ae/ä, ue/ü, oe/ö or aeu/äu; example: Hand -> Händchen or when one has a keyboard without Umlauten or a program has to work with it that can't handle Umlaute: Haendchen) apparently works the same for all forms of the diminutiv. Ps: grain of salt for the details in here, i only speak german and am not a linguist and google wasn't massively helpfull either at least not within ten minutes of searching. The thing i am sure of is that at least some dialects build their diminutiv in different ways from -chen.

[@linguafiles_]

I said glang, but I was tempted to go with glung. I guess that would be the past participle though. Did not see wugatorium coming. And I think a small wug is a wuglet.

[@crptpyr]

not necessarily past participle: cling/clung and fling/flung do not have an 'ang' variant so jumping to glung as a past tense makes some sense

[@linguafiles_]

@@crptpyr Good point.

[@jarvis5552]

I personally said wugling, for a small wug. Like duckling. I can see wuglet too, but my gut feeling was wugling. I went with glung, and for a wug-house? I said wughouse. Like a birdhouse. Lol

[@OldSchoolLPsGames]

​@@jarvis5552I immediately thought a small wug is a wiggle. I'm pretty sure that doesn't follow any real rules, it just makes me laugh.

[@therealzilch]

As an amateur linguist, I'd of course heard of the wug. But I didn't know about the whole scene around wuggim. Fascinating stuff, subscribed. cheers from cloudy Vienna, Scott

[@uRDM]

Wuggim lol

[@tabaxikhajit4541]

I came here from another of your videos that I was surprised to find interesting. You make linguistics sound fun!

[@alancapriccio7618]

You know, I tell myself I'm "kinda" into linguistics, then I watch this video and laugh till tears form. Excellent delivery, love the geodes, and really appreciated the merch segue. I'm a sociology student, which is great because it's so broad, and language/linguistics/semantics is readily applicable, but I'm here in my off time (the two hours I have to myself before I start the cycle again) because this is gold my friend, puts the gling back in glang (a small gling would be a glingie, and an even smaller one would be a glink) Look forward to discovering more of your work! -RAB

[@scottpage6674]

At some point in elementary school, we learned about compound words, and were asked to give examples. As expected, the class came up with blackboard, playground, etc. But one kid came up with napkin, you know, nap plus kin. The teacher explained that napkin didn't really count. What about pumpkin? She replied, "That's enough, Mr. Page." Anyway, as far as glinging, I first thought of glinged. After a few minutes, I thought glought might be an option, like the verb bring. So, happy ricking!

[@joadbreslin5819]

Always sad to hear a story about a teacher who stifles creativity.

[@TheWandererOfDreams]

Spiderman?

[@DrWhom]

anything of two or more syllables is ultimately a compounding of words, but the term compound is reserved for cases where the constituents are still recognisable and usually both nouns. in napkin, the kin is a dimunitive suffix and nap comes from latin mappa, which was a loanword from punic, a semitic language

[@mellertid]

I think inventive kids generally need very little validation, but zero isn't enough. 😊

[@JudyReadsCards]

"One kid... 'That's enough, Mr Page.'" I love the way you did that.

[@edella1967]

Maybe this is obvious, but I think the gling becoming glang in the past tense might have something to do with children being familiar with the verb sing becoming sang. The verbs rhyme.

[@lwardrop2453]

I did intuitively figure that for handkerchief, that the “hand-” part of the word would be a directly related to its hand-sized portability. It’s nice to occasionally get the etymology of a common yet random word I know the “Ka-choo” part of any explanation is not an actual explanation of its etymology, but it has been a very helpful memetic for remembering what that middle consonant is: “In a Hand, and a ka-choo from the Chief officer. Hand, Ka, Chief. Handkerchief.”

[@OldSchoolLPsGames]

The "kerchief" bit is definitely getting lost these days, but not too terribly long ago would have made perfect sense. In the early 1800s, we had "Mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap" (from The Night Before Christmas) because women would wear a square of fabric to cover their head at night. Go back even further and it was worn any time women were in public, but I think by the time the poem was written that wasn't the case. That practice isn't entirely gone, as some women still wear either a silk scarf or a silk cap/bonnet to sleep in, but it's definitely not something that everyone does any more. Yet the word lives on.

[@leroybrown2610]

As a fan of your channel and a father myself, this video had me smiling the whole time

[@Xylophytae]

As a danish person i really enjoyed the compound words part because of how many compound words there are in the danish language so i could sort of compare them

[@pierreabbat6157]

I'd like to see someone try the wug test in Welsh, where there are several ways to form the plural, and it's not obvious (at least to me) which to use for which noun, or where they all came from.

[@GimmeBooks95]

Since learning french I think of pomegranates as apple grenades Turns out etymologically grenades are named after pomegranates so it's the other way around

[@Loctorak]

Apple grenade is badass haha

[@unvergebeneid]

So potatoes are pomegranates of the earth then?

[@1AmGroot]

I feel like I was the only one who thought "glung" To be fair, English isn't my first language, but I'd like to think I know it at a level close to a native speaker

[@andreakoroknai1071]

that's what I said, I'm bilingual though with English "technically" my second language

[@chrismartinez5711]

Glung, I think, has more company than the sing-sang-sung paradigm.

[@joadbreslin5819]

Judging from the comments here, you are far from the only one who thought "glung". In fact, I am starting to think that I am the only one who thought "glang".

[@ak5659]

​@@joadbreslin5819'Glang' was my choice as well.

[@joadbreslin5819]

@@ak5659 I am glad to know I am not alone.

[@cheez8Productions]

I absolutely said he "glung". Glad to see I'm not the only one, but I'm surprised to see I'm so outnumbered!

[@TheCinderninja]

I'm a native speaker, but my immediate response was "he glung." And then I thought "glinged" as a possible second choice. Hearing "glang" Feels so wrong. I would have never thought that. It just does not feel right.

[@AugustoValentini]

I would never think of glang, I said glinged. Whenever I find a new verb I assume it's regular if it doesn't seem to come from a root that would suggest irregularity.

[@asmithgames5926]

In 3rd grade, I was way ahead in math but way behind in reading. I was being taught that hooked on phonics junk. Finally, my dad told me to just memorize word spelling, and my English started to shoot towards 💯

[@joadbreslin5819]

Today's educators haven't met an unbroken pedagogy they couldn't fix.

[@sciverzero8197]

Until I started intentionally thinking about etymologies, all of my word definitions were rote personal definitions. I didn't start doing this until I was over 25.

[@InsertCoffeeHere__]

Not you Rick-Rolling me! I was Rick-Rolled. 🤣

[@conlon4332]

0:18 He glinged?

[@FiftQuheill]

The wug t-shirt should have been in French "ceci n'est pas un Wug"

[@languagejones6784]

I’ll make one this week!

[@stretchyone]

I went with "glung", fascinatingly my husband reflexively said "glaught"

[@jana_t]

As a German, I would have said glinged, and a little wug is a wugling, obviously. 😊 The German "glove" = "Handschuh" (hand shoe) comes to mind, which even makes grown-ups think of a soft, knitted glove and not of a hard, leathery object, despite saying the word "shoe" out loud and being aware of the origin when asked for it. 🧤🖖🥾 In this context, I like the Japanese word "kinoko" (mushroom), and I would love it so much if its kanji form, instead of 菌 or 茸 (mushroom), was 木の子 (child of the tree), which would have fewer strokes and include the etymological origin as well as biological knowledge. 🌳🍄 And there are the words for Sunday and Monday in many Slavic languages. As a second language learner of Slavic languages, I did not notice that, for instance, our Upper Sorbian "njedźěła" (Sunday) comes from nje- (not) dźěła (work) and that "Monday" - "póndźela" is the day po (after) n(je-) (not) dźěła (work), despite knowing all these words. I did not even notice it when recently learning Ukrainian - not until my Ukrainian teacher pointed it out to me. When I taught my 2-year old brother the word "Buch" (German for book) when I was reading one, he immediately pointed at a pile of books, saying "Buchen", which could have been a plural form of Buch, but it means "beeches" (Buche -> Buchen = beech -> beeches), and I told him that and taught him the correct plural (Buch -> Bücher = book -> books) and he immediately got it and still does it correctly today, 30 years later. 😊

[@ThW5]

Not hard, I agree, but why would you think "soft and knitted"? You don't have a Handschuh in leather, latex, combined materials and so on? You use other words for gloves on the falconer, dressage rider, surgeon, gardener, cyclist and all that?

[@jana_t]

@@ThW5 Sure we do, but that is not the first thing that comes to mind. At least not for me.

[@qsix3205]

Hahaha, "Wugling" was the obvious answer for me too 😂

[@zak3744]

My first thought for a baby wug was "wuglet". In German, wouldn't you think of "Wugchen" or "Wuglein"? I think "wuglet" sounds cute, but "ein kleines Wugchen" sounds even cuter! (I'm not German though)

[@jana_t]

@@zak3744 I just wanted to clarify that I am not a mother tongue speaker of English. 😉 In German, we have -chen and -lein for diminutive, and for many words and names, both are possible, like Tischchen and Tischlein for a small table. They force the u to umlaut, so you would say Wügchen or Wüglein, in Southern German Wügle and in Swiss German Wügli - see the comment by @christanhaselbach9214

[@quironluna9844]

This video has become one of my favorites on KZbin! Though I'm sad there are no more wug keychains being sold 😭

[@scottp1100]

John McWhorter said something to the effect of - if your language and grammar are that complex, your language is broken. I think he was referring to all the whom vs who.

[@Loctorak]

Whomst?

[@scottp1100]

@@Loctorak Haha. Nice!

[@scottp1100]

@@Loctorak lie vs lay and further vs farther also never make sense

[@VexVerity]

Yesterday he glinged. This is a normal comment under the circumstances.

[@VexVerity]

Oh, interesting! Glang did not occur to me at all. Even trying to think beyond glinged immediately reminded me of yote as the past tense of yeet, which I love and accept but feel is fundamentally artificial in my own usage, even though it doesn’t detract from my belief regarding its validity as a real word. I know gling it isn’t a well-established English verb. I think my instinct is to not want to interfere with the root when trying to conjugate a word I don’t recognize as established in English.

[@VexVerity]

I would use the -s variants to pluralize a nonsense noun in an exercise I think is addressing me as a native English speaker. For words from other languages, it depends. I would say that I tend to like using the rules of the language of origin if I know them. Though given what English is like, I’m really not sure how true that is, or how I decide what counts. It’s a bit silly past a certain point, then very tiring. I’m not going to memorize Latin declension tables. I refuse. I generally won’t go to lengths that seem like they might be awkward for other people either. Not everyone enjoys that kind of thing. I don’t see the point in alienating people by refusing to pluralize Japanese words on principle when we’re not even speaking Japanese. And I’ve never met a plural of octopus I didn’t like, but I would happily never use any of them ever again to avoid the mess. I tend to default to -s variants as what I feel is the least likely to come across as intellectually aggressive when that’s not what I’m trying to do.

[@ItsAsparageese]

I haven't watched yet ... BUT, as the owner of a cattle dog mix known as a/the Wug _(etymology: "Pantera" became "Tella" through a comedy of errors -> "Tella-Wella-Woo" -> became abbreviated as "The Woo" -> then she rolled in poop once and became the "Woo-Nugget" as a poo-nugget joke (plus she is also nuggetishly-shaped) -> this became portmanteaued into "Wugget" -> now she is called "Wug", "The Wug", "Wuggetiest Bug", along with other titles such as "Hugget", "Snugget", "Tugget", etc)_ ... As owner of this dog, I just want to clear up this fact: Although there is (sadly) only one Wug, there can be no such thing as "too many" Wug, and if you could all have a Wug, I assure you, you most certainly would want one, because she is perfect and wuggety and snug-as-a-wugget-in-a-rugget and the best Wug that ever wugged, and if she could give all of you wuggety snugs, she would. That is all.

[@ItsAsparageese]

This video's piling-on-of-cuteness did not disappoint lol! I have informed the Wug that, to our surprise, it turns out that she is Something of An Informal Mascot for Linguists. I am pleased to report: The Wug wagged.

[@nineteenfortyeight]

Oh dang so it's a zero plural??

[@Queezbo]

I am now sad that I do not have and likely never will have a Wug so wuggerful and your Wug.

[@ItsAsparageese]

​@@nineteenfortyeight Well since there is only one of this Wug, there can't be "wugs" plural can there? Really though idk that just felt like the cute way to write it for this particular context lol

[@ItsAsparageese]

​@@Queezbo Awww the Wug and I both wouldn't want you to be sad. The best thing about puppers is that every single one is unique and special and good. I'm certain that the pupper(s) in your life is/are the exact right wuggy-in-their-own-ways pupper(s) to complement you and your life's journey, with the perfect personalized flavor of wuggetry!

[@ShiftySqvirrel]

A wug - wiggen. Diminutive: a wigling - wiglings. Dwelling: A "wughom/wuggom(wug-home)" or perhaps "wugro(o)m" as a reanalysising of "wuggom/wughom" as supposed to be from "wug-room". Edit: Adding "gling - glought" as well for funsies.

[@felicityc]

Jones, what are those coins you have in the background?? I noticed that Afghanistan coin (i think it is??) looks a little similar to my DLIFLC pashto course one, but a lot larger. I can't stop staring at it I must know what they are

[@languagejones6784]

Challenge coins presented in recognition of excellence, from my real, not KZbin life. There’s about to be two more in the next video I film (not the next I release)

[@mjackstewart]

I chose glinged. Does that make me a linguist? Also, this sounds hauntingly familiar ... In addition to our standardized tests, 9th graders had to take an extra tests. One of the test questions began with, "A baloo is a bear."

[@hollynelson3883]

No, it makes you a glinguist.

[@nowandrew4442]

No, a linguist would recognise the more-specific irregular pattern with -ing words and thereby not over-apply the more generic rule.

[@Loctorak]

​@@hollynelson3883 yesss haha I came here to make the same joke 👏

[@Phylaetra]

My first thought on a tiny wug was first 'wuggette', although I then rejected that and think 'wuge' (rhymes with 'huge'). I am not sure why I really like that, but it _feels_ right to me...

[@Kram1032]

wuguette 🥖

[@luizotavio2116]

I'd love to see a video about the fact that English only has one "to be", while Latin languages have two (like "ser" and "estar" in Spanish).

[@mrjones2721]

Clearly English is secure in itself, and doesn’t need any wishy-washy temporary states of being cluttering up its sentences. (But seriously, why is that? I assume the reason will be “because Germanic,” but still.)

[@koenahn]

French does not have them either. Does Italian have them?

[@Cha0s.Bring3r]

I definitely need a video on the shortened words I’m so so interested in it

[@triplebog]

Anybody who argued that children only just memorize what they've heard needs to talk to a child for more than 30 seconds and experience their imagination.

[@DynamicFortitude]

He did a glinging (Slavic native)

[@kathleenyes-cp2uf]

For the win!

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

I thought "glung", because these days the main source of slangy (slungy?) neologisms in English is through AAVE, which seems to be very fond of 2-form strong conjugations

[@IzzersKeeper]

Native English speaker here and I immediately thought the past tense of "gling" was "glung". I love linguistics and have also studied several foregin languages to a low/intermediate level of proficiency. No idea where the heck "glung" came from. Oh, and I'd totes watch a video on adorbs truncs!

[@thesleepydot]

possibly from “fling” -> “flung”? glung sounds way more natural to me than glang

[@KiKi-tf8rv]

“He glang yesterday” or “He had glung yesterday” or present tense.. “He has glung his last glong!” Those are the proper uses of “gling.” 🤣

[@EllenLouise19]

Ngl the "gling" to "glinging" to "glang" made me realise why so many kids in school would extrapolate from "bring" to "bringing" to "brang" rather than to "brought" so thank you for helping me understand through talking about this paper! Also, I did originally reply "glinged" but upon hearing "glang" was the majority choice, I had a moment of thought about whether I truly understood anything at all, ever hahahaha

[@jademonass2954]

for the question "what was he DOING yesterday?" i answered glinging if it had been "what did he do yesterday" i would have said glinged i have to note tho my hearing isnt 100%

[@embersassembling939]

We totes need a video on truncs. It would be adorbs.

[@nineteenfortyeight]

I also said "wugele". Now there are two of us. There are two people who are right. "Wugele" is the only plural that can enhance the adorableness of "wug".

[@drdca8263]

I was really unsure what the common answer to that one would be. The things that came to mind for me were “wugy” (which didn’t look right. I guess “wuggy” looks reasonable..?) of “wuglette” Edit: I meant these as the diminutive.

[@pierreabbat6157]

Is that the plural, or the diminutive? The plural would be "wugach".

[@a-s-greig]

Anyway, they live in wugwams. Or wugloos.

[@RadkeMaiden]

I'm curious where you get wugele from. Are you using a Yiddish suffix?

[@TriblendLightning]

First thought was imperfective aspect. He 'was glinging'? Wonder how often people default to that

[@DemeterTelphousia-Erinyes]

That was my immediate thought.

[@whisped8145]

Everyone around me keeps insisting on "Meese," and I fear the joke will eventually stick as normalcy.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

Actually the explanation of airplane seems to be mostly correct: the etymology really seems to be, a plane (flat) surface interacting with the air. Which is true as early wings were flat and only created lift via angle of attack (you can easily see this by looking at photos of biplanes).

[@Loctorak]

As well as that, the whole original word - aeroplane - is broken up between the wings or planes as you said, and aero comes from Greek āero-, meaning air. I think. If I'm wrong, I apologise for being a dumdum.

[@rowanrooks]

I hope we can agree that people who enjoy watching linguists defend their intellectual property should be called Wug Watchers 😁 Also, this is my first time watching a languagejones video, and I'm happy that the algorithm has blessed me upon this day. This was fun and well-researched. I love to see content that actively references and promotes the source material. I'm looking forward to watching other stuff from this channel.

[@marymegrant1130]

My own personal private meaning. I had an aversion to some foods as a kid if I suspected nasty things could be hidden within them. White sauces was one. My entire family liked cole slaw. However, my brother's had frequent cold sores, so I decided "cold slaw" was named for causing herpes simplex outbreaks and refused to eat it. I think I was probably 8 years old when I still held that belief. Oddly, I tolerated mayonaisse in tuna salad and tuna fish casserole. I think the plane example might be the researcher misunderstanding the child and the child meant "plane thing" not a plain thing. It is unclear from video if this response was written or verbal. Even if written, it could be the child's spelling. English often use nouns as adjectives.

[@LanguageSimp]

First

[@languagejones6784]

Now there are two. There are two ______

[@fartzenny]

nah that’s crazy

[@MaraschinoPenguin31415]

@@languagejones6784 There are two languites.

[@MaraschinoPenguin31415]

@@languagejones6784 There are two languites.

[@aanchaallllllll]

0:00: 🧠 Children are able to learn their first language quickly and easily, even when presented with made-up words. 3:07: 👶 Studying the vocabulary of first graders can reveal their ability to understand and create new words. 6:39: 📚 Burco worked with a publishing company to create a children's book, which allows parents to track their child's morphological development and gather linguistic data. 9:48: 📚 The video discusses a first-grade paper that demonstrates the use of morphological rules and the importance of graphing data. 12:33: 🔑 Children often have private meanings for compound words that may not align with their etymology. Recap by Tammy AI

[@MathAdam]

My daughter started to speak early in her career as a human. I was fascinated at her confusion with indexical pronouns. (Swapping “you” and “me”). I suspect other children have the same problem with understanding, but she spoke early enough that we could hear her sort it out.

[@stefanhensel8611]

The plural of "wug" is "wiggen". It's a Scandinavian loanword from the times of Danelaw. Unfortunately, most people nowadays don't know their own language anymore.

[@rynabuns]

omg i said "wuggen"! close enough 😅

[@ak5659]

​@@rynabunsSame!😂😂😂😂

[@cannot-handle-handles]

Agreed! Like "wolf" and "wilven". ;-)