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Why "Kirin" and not "Kirins"?


FlareGun45

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I'm not one for correcting people's grammar cause it makes me look like a butt when I do that, but this is starting to make me concerned: the grammar of the word "Kirin", the species from Sounds of Silence. There's one Kirin, and multiple Kirins. That's what I thought. But now people are saying one Kirin and multiple Kirin. Whyyyyy? This is against everything I learned in English class! Singular means no S, and plural means S! 

What's your opinion on this huge mindboom?

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They use "kirin" as the plural in the episode. There are plenty of plurals formed that way – fish, deer, moose...

Even allowing for sentences like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". :P

"Kirins" seems to be used as the plural in some other sources, but I don't think the show using a different plural is such a big problem – it's a fictional creature, and the MLP kirin(s) are quite different from many other depictions of that creature.

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Probably one of the reasons is that the unusual plural form makes this word sound more fantasy-like. It's similar to elf races manes in the Elder Scrolls (e. g. Altmer is both singular and plural). But it's just my guess.

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As stated English allows multiple forms of plural, one of which is known as the irregular plural. It’s not extremely uncommon in animal nouns, but it’s also words like armor and craft. I would like to point out that ‘s’ is certainly not the only plural form. ‘es’, ‘ies’, and ‘en’ are also found commonly. How these are pronounced can also be altered depending on if there is no silibant sound. You hear some with a soft ‘z’ instead of s. 

 

As as this is a topic that mentions a point rendered irrelevant based on accurately presented information it’s probably prudent to close out this conversation because every reply is likely to say the same thing in several variations. 

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