I honestly hate some of what gets defined as small talk...like I don't think, "How are you?" Is really an appropriate question for people you don't know...(if you actually want an honest exchange that isn't just filling the air with empty words/automatic responses. )

But books, movies, what someone is wearing, someone's pets, something their kid is doing, unusual or irritating weather...I think those can be decent conversation starters.

I got your point the first time. I just think history is a lot more variable than heat in a pan. Loan words don't always stop evolving at their point of origin circumstances.

As an English speaker, that just seems weird as hell to me lol. Why talk to other people as if they aren't there?

When people are saying that in Finnish....arent they giving an unspoken opinion about those things? Like "this sucks" or "this is wonderful", dont you think so too? Because there's no point in just telling people something you know they already know. The end goal has to be something else.

Well of course the languages a word is based on are going to affect the spelling. I understand etymology is a thing lol. That just seems like a really obvious answer for anyone posting about English in this subreddit.

If Normandy hadn't invaded England, we would have likely taken "human" from the older latin word "humanis".

I know most plural french words include an S on the end and Normandy invaded England, which contributed to middle English taking up some Middle French words...but are you sure other loan languages use an "s" for plural?

(I'm really don't know/am genuinely asking. )

I wasn't claiming the etymology of the word lol. Just why human/humen wouldn't work practically. That being said, human didn't start with the french word "humain". It started with the latin "homo" and then the latin "humanis"....That french word "humain" showed up around 300 years later.

Those words aren't exactly a beacon of clarity either...but I see more problems happening with the word "human"....because it's not just a noun. Words like "Sheep" and "barman" are just nouns, so it's easy enough to just add an article to clarify the difference, between plural and singular.

Example sentence: "If it was human/humen."

If you're just listening and the person has an accent or lacks perfect diction....It's impossible to tell if they're talking about the quality of being human or "humans" plural.

Humen and human sound almost identical. Not good for auditory speech. Especially considering different accents....

Calling yourself anything, casts doubt on you being that thing. The things we know to be true about ourselves, don't need to be said anymore than, "The sky is blue."

Yeah. It's obvious what you were thinking along the lines of...real life situations. But those don't apply here. It doesn't matter if it's a book or TV. Genres still apply whenever a story is being told. People who search for "mystery" books or films, are specifically searching for a "who done it" scenario where the crime is always solved by the end. And part of the fun is trying to figure out the answer...because you know there is one.

"Unsolved Mysteries" is telling crime stories that can't be solved and have no answer....which breaks away from everything "Mystery" as a genre, is defined by. Therefore "Unsolved Mysteries" is not redundant.

In the context of a story told to you for entertainment purposes...yeah, it's still a mystery. (Just like a Romance novel is still a romance novel even if a lover dies at the end. ) We're talking about the context of stories and genre.