Puzzle 2:
What do the following "words" have in common. (Note that knowledge of
several foreign languages may help in solving this puzzle.)
antipode: found in many English dictionaries
coriands: seen in the English portion of
a Thai restaurant menu in Copenhagen.
goundabout: seen by my sister on a road sign in East Africa
Solution to Puzzle 2:
The answer: they're all obtained by incorrect back-formation from
plurals to singulars.
The word antipodes comes from Greek, and literally means "opposite feet."
It originally meant the inhabitants of the lands on the opposite side of
the earth (as their feet are pointing towards the center of the earth, which
is up in our reference frame). Its correct Greek singular is "antipus"
(similarly the correct Greek plural of octopus is "octopodes").
English obtained the word "antipode" by back-formation from the plural.
In Danish, many words are pluralized by adding "er." Thus, whoever
translated the Thai restaurant menu from Danish into English
assumed the Danish word "koriander" was a plural, and translated it
into English as "coriands." (This wasn't too unreasonable ... chives
and cloves are plural spices in English.)
Finally, East African languages (such as Swahili) generally form
plurals by changing the start of a word. In whatever language
was spoken locally, "roundabout" would naturally be a plural word
whose singular is "goundabout."