I teach ESL, and this kinda shit in the English language drives me nuts. It’s impossible to explain. Just gotta know it. The worst is when you’re asking questions. “What’s this?” for single things. “What are these?” for multiples. HTF do you explain that you have to know to ask “What are these?” when you’re asking about pants or scissors. They’re literally asking what those things are. It’s bizarre.
Just blame the French for things like this. Your students will be like “Oh that explains it” and move on to the next nonsensical thing they need to learn.
Every language has it’s “you just gotta know” moments. Like German. Not too hard until you start getting into technical reading and speech. Just how many words can you glue together? And why?
I teach ESL, and this kinda shit in the English language drives me nuts. It’s impossible to explain. Just gotta know it. The worst is when you’re asking questions. “What’s this?” for single things. “What are these?” for multiples. HTF do you explain that you have to know to ask “What are these?” when you’re asking about pants or scissors. They’re literally asking what those things are. It’s bizarre.
Just blame the French for things like this. Your students will be like “Oh that explains it” and move on to the next nonsensical thing they need to learn.
Every language has it’s “you just gotta know” moments. Like German. Not too hard until you start getting into technical reading and speech. Just how many words can you glue together? And why?
What do you mean why?
So we can have games named like this
spoiler
PVKK: Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant
It is impossible to intuit, but you just introduce “pair of pants” as the singular article. Thus, two pants are “two pairs of pants.”
Which is fine for more advanced students, but for kids whose vocabulary and grammar are already very limited, it confuses things a lot.
Bring a pair of kitchen scissors, and awe them by separating the halves
Why is a pair of scissors separated in halves? Shouldn’t a pair of scissors be separated into 2 unit scissor?
EDIT: so you would have 2 half pair of scissors? A pair of half pair of scissors?
Apparently this oddity has a term
But I don’t see anything makings sense of it