Pesky Plurals

Anyone growing up in India in the 80’s and maybe the early 90’s, when TV was not yet invaded by the army of satellite and cable channels that called themselves the Star and Zee network, would remember that there was only good old Doordarshan- India’s National (Govt) TV channel. And good old Doordarshan had this animated strip- Ek Titli Anek Titiliyan (One Butterfly, Many Butterflies) that still drives many older people to nostalgic tears.  I’m glad that I was able to find this video on youtube of that animation.

You may be wondering  why I decided to post  an obscure animation strip from the 80s – infact I hardly  think of this cartoon myself, but I suddenly remembered it in the context of a concept I was thinking of this evening whilst shopping for groceries (who says chores are not good for your soul?)

One of the things that always fascinates me about learning different languages is how different sets of people came up with their own ways to explain similar concepts. In the cartoon strip above, the first part is uniquely dedicated to the girl explaining to her little brother the concept of plurals- one sun, one moon, many starts/ one squirrel, many squirrels/ one butterfly, many butterflies and so on. The general theme of the video is unity- how we are stronger together than apart. But for today’s post I will just take the first part.

Plurals. How often do speakers of English or most Indo European languages question the necessity of plurals? From the start we begin to learn how to make more out of one- butterflies from butterfly, mangoes from mango, geese from goose. How else could we describe objects in their multiples except by modifying the nouns? How else really?

But the fact is that there are quite a few languages that get away without the bother of modifying nouns to make plurals. In fact the notion of plurals does not exist at all. I first encountered this when I learnt Japanese. I was stunned- “But how would they differentiate between 1 glass of water and 2 glasses of water?” I pondered- much like the students before and after me.  It was then that I was introduced to the magical world of counters.

The Japanese do not describe plurals in the same way we do. This is not to say they cannot differentiate one book from many book or two books. It is just that they say it in a way without modifying the noun- with the counters. Counters are standard terms that are used to denote multiple quantities of nouns. Nouns are classified into families depending on their qualities- for example all machines get a counter, all houses and buildings get a counter, birds get a counter, books & stationery get a counter, people get a counter (of course!) and so on.

So instead of saying ‘There is one computer’ and ‘There are two computers’ and so on, the Japanese would say ‘Computer One (counter term- in this case dai) is’, ‘Computer Two (dai) is’ and so on. I simplify of course but that is the basic concept.  The same goes for all nouns with their counters. Of course if you don’t always want to be counting how many objects there are, you could always use general terms such as many and few to describe the plurality of the situation around you.

So far from having a dumbed down unitary world, this language in a way gives you a heads up- let’s suppose you didn’t recognise the object the person is talking about but you catch the counter and you remember that it is the counter used to describe cylindrical objects then you can probably guess from the context of the talk as to what the object is.

But of course the first obstacle is the learning of the counters themselves. To a first time learner of the language, the counters can be daunting. Only regular practice and rote can help- I won’t lie. But there is a cop-out mechanism- a general counter which can be used for all objects- the people will understand you if you use this, but the overlord of Grammar will frown upon you.

A few years after I first encountered Japanese, I realised that the system of counters was not unique to Japanese language and culture. Sure enough I found counters in Mandarin Chinese as well. And then when I looked harder I found the same system in existence in Thai. I am guessing that languages such as Korean and Lao have the same system though I am slightly more doubtful about Burmese, Vietnamese and Khmer. I am not surprised about the link between Chinese and Japanese- the Japanese character script itself was borrowed from Chinese and so interconnections would be many but I was quite surprised by finding Thai figuring in this list for I always assumed that Thai was always influenced more by Sanskrit but what do I know?

Do you know of any other language that uses this system of counters? Do let me know.  In the meantime I’ll go back to shedding the tears over the Ek Titli video

One, More and Many