lolita -> loli
lolitas -> lolis

lolis I guess? never really thought about it

I'd put money on a lot of it being, loli (lolita) competing with the older word lolly (lollipop). From my own personal pronuciation and that of others, people pronounce loli and lolly the same. Lollypop seems to be a native english construction or atleast wikipedia says it was first recorded by the english lexicographer Francis Grose. Regardless the pronunciation of lolly has been "properly" anglicized, with the plural being pronounced with an "s"-sound. These two being homophones has naturally lead to them being homophones in the plural form; the spelling of lolis is just a reflection of the pronunciation.

"I'm going to pick up some loli at the store."

English has a peculiar brand of autism where they specifically import the simplest plural form of a foreign loanword and then use awareness of that frankly tiny irregularity as a status marker. They don't import other inflections: fungus becomes fungi, but never fungum, fungos, or fungorum, and even then you end up with cases like octopus and its two competing different possible plural forms, one anglicized, the other latinized, but both of them are wrong. The true Ancient Greek plural is pronounced more like "oktohpohdess." Very silly, if you ask me.

The correct inflection for Japanese nouns, which completely lack plurality, is nothing at all: a zero. That's the educated non-conjugation for Jap loans. This, however, does not stop the rest of English grammar from applying to these nouns, leading to the egregious example of "anime as fuck." Zero derivated into an adjective, can you believe that shit? Here you can see mecha being used as both:
>Usually in a mecha series the mecha are the apex of military weapons.
I know what you're thinking, Japanese says ロボットアニメ no problem, but that's a compound. Adverbs can't modify it. In English, however, one finds the following sentences:
>then you have the potential to like this game, it's VERY mecha.
>The smaller Tau suits are very mecha.
>Drills, mining lasers, all these are very mecha.
Clearly adjectival, and perfectly grammatical.

I'd bet the plural is proportionally much more popular for words that are either less common or not so ingrained as lacking the inflection. For example, there are 585k mentions of "mecha" on desu, but only 36k "mechas," less than 10%. On the other hand, there are 370k "shota" vs 63k "shotas," at a drastically higher rate. On top of this, a very interesting quirk is that the conjugation "are" strongly favours using an anglicized plural. Whether it's loli, shota, or imouto, when searching "X are" and "Xs are" the latter is several times more popular than the former. This does not hold for mecha though, in that case "mecha are" is still the more popular of the two. Interesting, wouldn't you say?
And again, this is with the unaffixed form still covering cases like "Gyaru and shota are a perfect pairing," or "Cp and lolicon/shota are inextricably linked at the hip" where it refers to it as a genre like lolicon, being uncountable. Oh yeah, they can be uncountable too, which is a completely different thing.

Anyways, I came across a couple of neat irregularities showcasing the inconsistency:
>You know in the past man it really was loli&shotas are just CUTEEEEE
>Shota are made for oneesans.

>>60994
I think individual pronounciations of loli vary due to orthography and don't necessarily match up with lolly, but even then the fact that >>60995 doesn't exist shows the two words are well differentiated. If they weren't, it'd be a two-way street.


....It's 4AM and I've got work to do..... This is what happens when I don't take my sleeping pills....
...Oyasumi~......

>>60998
I think Katana is a good example as well, Katanas is always the plural. Nobody would ever say Katana as a plural in English.

My unpopular opinion is that all Japanese words should have s added in plural form even if though that's not what happens in Japanese. For this reason I use animes and mangas even if it annoys people.
I don't think it matters really though, as you say it's pretty inconsistent.

>>60999
>My unpopular opinion is that all Japanese words should have s added in plural form even if though that's not what happens in Japanese. For this reason I use animes and mangas even if it annoys people.

somebody's getting bullied at the kissu meetup...

>>60998
Interestingly, you can occasionally encounter instances of English plural -s in Japanese attaching to native or Sino-Japanese words. One example is this blog post https://karapaia.com/archives/52317637.html that uses the non-standard phrase "2匹の猫ズ" (nihiki no nekos).
Another example is this track from an Aria drama CD titled "社長ズ！お鍋ぐつぐつ" (Shachous! Onabe Gutsugutsu).
A third example can be found at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%82%BA#Etymology_2
>>60999
>mangas
This word has made me think of "man gas" ever since it was pointed out to me.

"How much sushi did you eat?"
"Five pieces."
Substitute 'sushi' with 'dried mango' and the sentence is still grammatical. If you were to replace 'pieces' with 'slices' then you could also substitute in 'bread'.

"How much anime did you watch?"
"Five series."
Substitute 'anime' with 'tv' and the sentence is still grammatical. If you were to replace 'series' with 'songs' then you could also substitute in 'music'.

While the fact that they're Japanese loanwords is certainly a factor in determining how they are pluralized in English, it is important to note that they are still used in a way that conforms to standard English practice. By comparison, it is not normal to use such a construct when talking about people (among other topics) in English, so that rule takes precedent and we pluralize Japanese loanwords like loli and tsundere with an -s.

>>60999
>Nobody would ever say Katana as a plural in English.
It actually does happen a bit. Even in its Wikipedia article, where it's mostly regular plural, you can find it thrice:
>Katana are distinguished by their type of blade:
>Katana are traditionally made from a specialized Japanese steel called tamahagane
>Sharp katana are only really used during tameshigiri
Or this alternation in a random TVTropes page:
>Katanas Are Just Better
>Of course, in reality, katana are no better or worse than most any other type of sword.

>>61008
Those are mass nouns, which is different from plurality. Mass nouns can't be directly coupled with a number, they need to be accompanied by a "measure" word, and in English they cannot take with the indefinite article a/an either. You can't say "a water" when you're referring to the substance, the medium, but you can say both "a drop of water" in singular and "drops of water" in plural. Notice that the one with the article and inflection is the measure word, not the mass noun. They can also only be accompanied by "much," never by "many" or "few." You ask about how much fun someone had, never how many.

Mangoes can be either countable or uncountable, but with sushi the standard is overwhelmingly uncountable, measured with the word "pieces" like how you'd talk about pieces of plastic or pieces of bread, and yeah, slices of bread too, crumbs and loaves even. But never "a bread" as a singular item, only as a type, such as in "a baguette is a long, thin type of bread of French origin." TV and music in your examples refer to mediums too, not unlike how water does.

The Jap loans I mentioned lack a plural inflection, but that doesn't make them mass nouns by default. "Anime" as meaning a single show isn't a mass noun at all, proven by how you can easily say "an anime" using an indefinite article, or "many" as a modifier.
>How many anime do we even get that would last long enough for that to matter?
>You wouldn't understand if you hadn't seen how many anime were ruined by 3dcg.
>Many anime and manga have live action adaptations, they always have consistently bad quality.
See? A loli, a shota, an imouto, an oneesan, those are all fine. They're countable when referring to individuals, even if they lack a plural inflection. Adding numbers to these words (which is perfectly possible) puts pressure on pluralizing them regularly, making it so "two lolis" is over twice as common as "two loli" (and that's with singular loli acting as an adjective, like in "two loli classifiers").

This stuff is all very fickle and heavily relies on semantics, but it's a thing, and it's separate from plurals.
Note: in Jap, all nouns require a measure word, as in >>61004's example of 2匹の猫ズ. This is even though it had a joke plural, showing that it's added just for comedy, and doesn't have any serious weight.

ｷﾀ───(ﾟ∀ﾟ)───!!

>>61033
Sasuga BBC journalists.

Isnt lolita a different thing to lolicon. I've heard the book is one of those often namedropped by tryhards though so I have no idea if it has a "thing" around it

Watching Loose Women with anon!

>>61037
I don't know, honestly. There's too much stuff to maneuver around.

>>61037
>>61040
Feds.

>>61039
i, anonymous, can confidently say, on behalf of anonymous, that no
>>61041
green glowing sager

>>61037
"lolicon" is literally "lolita complex", Lolita (the character from the book) is where the term originated from

>>61044
Yeah, but it gets mixed up because the west's usage of lolicon is different from Japan's, and lolita as a standalone term usually refers to the fashion, not the sexual stuff.

>>61037
Lolita is a serious and well-regarded work of literature about a man's attraction to a pubescent girl.
Lolita is a pubescent girl from a novel.
Lolita is a fashion style.
A Lolita Complex is an attraction to girls like Lolita.
Lolicon is short for Lolita Complex.
A Lolicon is a person with a Lolicon.
Loli is short for Lolita.
A Loli is a girl like Lolita.
Con is short for Complex.
Con is short for Convention.
Con means a negative.

It's really very simple.

>>61046
i went to the lolicon con once but it had the con that all the lolita wasnt from lolis it was from lolicons

the lolicon complex.
lolicon-con.

>>61046
>A Lolita Complex is an attraction to girls like Lolita.
As an interesting historical note, the term 'lolita complex' was originally coined by an American psychologist (whose book on the topic would subsequently be translated into Japanese) to describe girls who behave like Lolita, not the people attracted to such girls.

>>61048
Wait, doesn't that make Kanna and Riko a pair of lolicon loliconcon lolis?

as an experiment I tried using the word "loli" as a plural in >>61230

>>61250
Didn't even realize you meant it in a plural way. I read it as like a 'release the kraken' type of thing.

>>61251
The 'release the kraken' feeling did influence my wording there too. The acronym for that anime is PRAD and it always sounds like people are talking about some top secret military autonomous weapons platform