thinking about \u201cgolds\u201d lately
![\"image\"](\"/media/b4d4bfd465c9db6bdfbf755691d7ded64a1456b1_af1b511288ac.png\")
This is a classic \u201cbad video game translation\u201d screenshot (from Faxanadu for the NES), and that quote enjoyed a stint as a meme back in the era of \u201call your base are belong to us.\u201d And it is funny, in that way that only uncanny-valley language can be.
But it got me thinking, what\u2019s actually the problem here? The issue is that \u201cgold\u201d is a mass noun, not a count noun, right? And in real life that explanation suffices; but in video games and RPGs it\u2019s not really true, is it? You might say an item \u201ccosts 10 gold\u201d in that context, without appending a counting-word as would be required with a real currency. If you said \u201cit costs 10 gold pieces\u201d in the context of a game it would come off a little prissy, like the GM who narrates in cod Shakespeare or the guy who roleplays in the raid chat.\u00a0
What seems to have happened here is that the ahistorical fantasy-game convention of universal \u201cgold coins\u201d (or gold/silver/copper) has been understood to refer to a notional currency denomination called the \u201cgold\u201d, which would be a count noun by the normal conventions. But because it inherits its name from a mass noun, it retains the syntactic conventions associated with mass nouns and thus is irregular. I think this convention probably applies with most notional things that behave like count nouns but use the name of a mass noun? \u201cTumblarity,\u201d \u201cmana\u201d, and so on. And so, while we can\u2019t know the translators\u2019 intent, it may well be that this error is not a straightforward confusion about the mass/count distinction but instead is a result of them missing an irregularity which would (of course) have not been covered in any sort of teaching materials.
I usually think of irregular forms as relics, so it\u2019s interesting to see how irregularity can crop up so abruptly and consistently just because of a context shift in a known word.