Talk:English plurals
Wow, you all have really gone to town on this little orphan I left on your doorstep!
Style question: why the monospaced font for the words? According to Wikipedia:How does one edit a page, the only style sheet I have found so far, monospace is for technical terms. To me, proportional spacing always looks better. Ortolan88
Want to talk octopus/octopodes? :-) -- Zoe
Sure, I love to talk! It is my general view that requiring English speakers to know and understand the pluralization rules of foreign languages in order to form English plurals is contrary to the way we do things in English. The OED does give the plural octopodes, but also gives the anglicization, octopuses. I don't think even cephalopodologists say octopodes.
Most people, me included, wouldn't necessarily be sure that octopus was a Greek word at all. It ends in -us like lots of Latin words. In fact, many people try to treat cactus as a Latin word pluralized cacti, but it isn't Latin at all.
So, for my money, what the Greeks, or Romans, would have said two or three thousand years ago is immaterial. In English, we make plurals by adding -s or -es and all the other ways these erudites have listed in this article, but as I noted in my original stub, there can be differences by context, appendices in books, appendixes in people's bodies. Ortolan88, Sunday, June 23, 2002
But we don't say octopuses, we say octopi. -- Zoe (at least I do)
Well, that's the issue I was trying to address. It isn't a Latin root, it's Greek, but for us it is an English word and ought to have an English plural. No harm in saying octopi, but if you worked for me and you wrote octopi, I would change it to octopuses.
Notice that I haven't dared to put this in the main article yet, but I am certain that I am right on this, having done a fair amount of research (well before you asked :=)
Like most questions of usage, it's a matter of opinion + knowledge + what sounds right Ortolan88
Well, I just looked it up and it looks like octopuses is correct and octopi is incorrect (at least in American English). Here is an interesting link that goes into just this issue: http://www.aquarium.org/upwelling/upwelling32.htm
Enjoy. --maveric149
The link makes the point I was trying to make. Therefore, the plural of platypus is platypuses. Interesting point he makes about the two plurals of fish, two or more fish species is fishes, but two or more fish is fish (except in the Bible). Something similar happens with iris. Two or more flowers are irises, but two or more plants are iris.
Also need to add something about "infix" plurals, like attorneys-general and courts martial. Ortolan88
As to the plural of Greek-derived words ending in -us, they end in -os in Greek, and if they are second declension, the plural is -oi in Greek, and it's fine to say -i in English as if they were Latin. So colobus, colobi. But if a noun in -us has plural in -era, the corresponding ending in Greek is -os, plural -é (genus:genera, genos:gené). This was originally -os, -esa, and they changed differently. (In Slavic: kolo:kolesa "wheel".) I don't know of any Greek words like that in English.
BTW, I sometimes pluralize scientific names: a geneticist has a jar full of Drosophilae melanogasteres. --phma
But dictionary.com has oc·to·pus·es or oc·to·pi -- Zoe
- Check Fowler: "the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses". Likewise hippopotamus. Tagging an "i" as a plural to all "-us" words is grammatical hypercorrection I suspect. -- Tarquin
"Hippopotami" is acceptable because "potamos" is second declension (as is "hippos"). "Octopi" is not because "pous" is in one of the many subgroups of the third declension. The OED gives both "-potamuses" and "-potami". -phma
Style answer: Using a monospaced font was the easiest way to get columnised lists. I guess I could use tables... Ant
Thanks. Anything but tables! Difficult to code, difficult to maintain, boring overkill for the writer unless the situation is desparate and the information can't be presented any other way.
People get a kick out of pluralizing words of Greek and Latin origin that end in -us with the -i, and if Fowler can't stop them, then I certainly can't, but there just can't be a pluralization rule in English requiring English speakers to know whether a word of Greek origin is of the first or second declension.
Because so many people do pluralize in this way, it is appropriate for these plurals to appear in dictionaries. Ultimately, usage rules in all languages. But the best style for printed and other formal material is to form English plurals in an English way.
To step away from ancient tongues, I love tamales. When I refer to a single one of these comestibles in English, I call it a tamale, but if I am speaking Spanish, it is a tamal. The plural is the same in both languages. Even though I know the rules for making plurals in both English and Spanish, when I am speaking or writing English, I use the English rules.
I just checked my big Spanish dictionary. To pluralize hipopótamo, they simply tack on the s, just like the rules of Spanish say they should.
I'm going to gather all this together and take the plunge of putting something in the article. Ortolan88
Spanish is descended from Latin and has changed the way plurals of nouns are formed. First declension is -as, second is -os, third may be -es or otherwise. So the plural of hipopótamo is hipopótamos, just as the plural of lobo is lobos, even though in Latin both words ended in -i in the plural. -phma
I just looked up virus in my Latin dictionary. It's neuter, but the genitive is virî (that's supposed to be a macron), indicating that it's second declension. But second-declension neuter nouns normally end in -um. Does anyone know what the Latin plural (or better yet, the whole declension) is? --phma
In Latin, virus is a mass noun meaning "poison" or "venom". --Damian Yerrick
I am not sure about nouns of Japanese origin: I think that "samurai" and "yen" are plural as well as singular, but other Japanese-derived nouns, e.g. "kimono" do not fit the pattern. How does this work? Juuitchan
- Hrm, I've always tended to use the "tack on -(e)s" rule for most Japanese words I use. Thus samurai:samurais, kimono:kimonos. The only exception I know of offhand in my usage is one yen : three yen. I wouldn't have the foggiest how to produce a Japanese plural, or whether Japanese even bothers marking nouns for number. :-) Pgdudda