Talk:childs
Add topicLatest comment: 10 years ago by BD2412 in topic childs
Deletion discussion
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To my knowledge, this is not a common error by adult native speakers of English. It needs significant written sources for inclusion.Jchthys (talk) 15:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- This is really an RfV matter, but that would be satisfied by the following examples:
- 1970, Freda Utley, Odyssey of a Liberal: Memoirs, page 103:
- I remember one amusing episode: in a conversation with an engineer when responding to the usual Japanese enquiry in making social talk, "How many childs have you?"
- 1979, Spit in the Ocean, Volume 1, Issues 5-6, page 106:
- "It is as they say;" he clucks; "these childs are smoke the evil dope and the old ways of behave are forget.
- 2003, Richard Matheson, Duel: Terror Stories by Richard Matheson, page 172:
- I can have many childs. Ten at a time at once.
- 2005, Stephan Olariu, Albert Y. Zomaya, Handbook of Bioinspired Algorithms and Applications, page 6-402:
- Thus, the initial random vectors are all normalized and the childs are also normalized to unit vectors after any crossover or mutation operation.
- 2006, Holman Day, The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot, page 192:
- It is poison that has kill our little Rosemarie – and all her life ahead! The doctor say so – and he say I cannot understand about the rich man, why he do it. But I understand that the childs are dying.
- 2010, Jack Dazey, Dying For Her Love, page 114:
- We are not confused children and if we were then let these childs be free, for life is short and every bit of a smile extends life one more day.
- Cheers! bd2412 T 17:53, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- FYI: (childs*10000),children at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.; “childs”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- @Dan Polansky I've never seen that before, I'm assuming it inflates the number of occurrences of "childs" by 10000? --WikiTiki89 18:06, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- That's right; it multiplies the plotted frequency. To verify, plug in different numbers and see what they do to the graph. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:10, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- @Dan Polansky I've never seen that before, I'm assuming it inflates the number of occurrences of "childs" by 10000? --WikiTiki89 18:06, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- We could use some kind of usage label or usage note for this to explain in what usage situations it might be found. But, as it is not a misspelling of children, the question of whether it is a "common" has no relevance. DCDuring TALK 18:11, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- It is not a misspelling, but it seems to be a malformation. If we decide to exclude rare misspellings, we can similarly decide to exclude rare malformations. I am not saying we necessarily have to do that; I am merely providing some data that have a bearing to a prospective exclusion policy, similar to the unwritten policy of excluding rare misspellings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:15, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Is it a malformation? It's nonstandard, but it is "child" with an "-s", which is the correct way to form most plurals. Actually, given the context of most of the uses I found (outside the math book), it seems to primarily be a literary device designed to convey the dialect of a character. bd2412 T 18:24, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Good point. One might actually argue that "children" is a malformation, albeit an incredibly common one. In fact, children seems to be a relict, part of the historical core of the language. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- It's already tagged as "nonstandard". Tag it as "rare" and add a usage note indicating that it is generally used to portray dialect that is something less than fully literate, and keep it like that. bd2412 T 19:11, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Good point. One might actually argue that "children" is a malformation, albeit an incredibly common one. In fact, children seems to be a relict, part of the historical core of the language. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Is it a malformation? It's nonstandard, but it is "child" with an "-s", which is the correct way to form most plurals. Actually, given the context of most of the uses I found (outside the math book), it seems to primarily be a literary device designed to convey the dialect of a character. bd2412 T 18:24, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- It is not a misspelling, but it seems to be a malformation. If we decide to exclude rare misspellings, we can similarly decide to exclude rare malformations. I am not saying we necessarily have to do that; I am merely providing some data that have a bearing to a prospective exclusion policy, similar to the unwritten policy of excluding rare misspellings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:15, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- I think we could keep it but add a usage note saying it's primarily used to indicate that the speaker is not a native speaker of English. It's a whole different kind of "nonstandard" from, say, chillun. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:15, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Keep (tagged "rare", as bd2412 says).—msh210℠ (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
- Keep, make sure it's tagged as nonstandard in modern English. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:54, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Kept and tagged as "rare". bd2412 T 16:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC)