this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
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Yup. Totally and exactly my intention... those things you said.
foot -> feet is ablaut, changing the vowel in the root, also in break-broke, etc.
-i is a non-native plural suffix, e.g. cactus-cacti, octopus-octopi (from Latin), it's very unusual to loan these purely grammatical elements (morphemes)
Alternatively, labubu-labibi is a case of a changed transfix (singular: u_u, plural: i_i), or of vowel harmony. Either way, all very exotic for English standards :D
I've always wondered how non-native suffices come to be- do you know? To take the example, octopus is almost exactly the Greek original word. It's understandable that octopodoi isn't intuitive in English. But why not stick with octopuses, or the Greek/English-mix octopodes (I know both of them are a thing, too). How did a third language come into it?
It's because -us is the Latin second declension nominative singular, and its nominative plural is -i. People educated enough to know the -us/-i pattern (cactus/cacti, alumnus/alumni, stimulus/stimuli) but unaware that "octopus" is Greek and has an irregular stem are likely to misapply the Latin pattern.
I thought as much, but was never sure. Could've developed more naturally, like from Romans in Britain, for all I knew.