this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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There are two wug
Because wug are like moose.
Unless it's weg, like goose and geese.
Also, I'm kinda cheating because I've seen this before. The first time I saw it, I said wugs, which is exactly the point of the test.
If you ever get a chance, take a look at the other parts of the test. There's multiple places where the kind of exceptions I used above would be available, but (and this is part of the point) the age of person the test was meant for wouldn't have been exposed to those exceptions yet. And those exceptions are exceptions, which even adults don't always think of when faced with this kind of thing. Like I said, my first thought when I initially saw this back in the day was "wugs", not any of the exceptions you'd think of given time. And I play word games where that kind of thing matters.
I like to think that my English is quite good, but this one threw me off. Am I supposed to understand from the name wug that the plural of wug is not wugs?
Edit: if plural of wug is wug, then why isn't plural of rug rug, but rugs? Or am I mistaken there as well?
That's one of the interesting things about language. It's all just sounds that we agree represent ideas.
But, because language use is such an intrinsic part of our brains, the rules around language are picked up much faster than we realize. This test is generally done with very young children that haven't had much (if any) grammat traint. They just pick you that adding s to the end of a noun means that there are multiple of if. They'll use that rule even when the noun is nonsense.
But that rule is arbitrary to an extent. We could collectively agree that adding k at the end means plural. It doesn't even have to be at the end, it could be anywhere in the word.
Some words don't follow the normal rules. Like mouse, and mice when talking about the animals. Or the exceptions I mentioned earlier.
If we apply those exceptions to a nonsense noun like wug, it is no more or less "right" than adding s. But the test is about showing how language develops, not how a given language functions.
English is an odd language sometimes though. We borrow words from other languages, sometimes adopting the grammar and rules, sometimes not. But English is built on multiple older languages to begin with, so the rules it has can be mind boggling.
I also wanted to add another aspect to this test:
The difference between wug-s (voiced fricative, sounds like z) and wug-s (unvoiced, sounds like s).
As an example:
Dogs (dog/z/)
Cats (cat/s/)
The same pluralization rule is applied to both words, but the actual sounds made are different depending on the voicing of the previous sound/letter. You can feel the 'voicing' (vibration) of different sounds by putting your hand on your throat while saying these words.
Also fun fact I have a tattoo of a wug :)