Re: CHAT: Worse Greek 102 (was: Bad Latin 101)

At 1:35 pm -0500 5/2/01, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>>And if the answer to both the above questions is "no", then these people
>>are lacking in logic as well as literacy.
>
>While I commiserate, I think you may be over harsh with these
>people. By in large, they are not linguists nor Latinists.
Nothing to do with being a linguist or Latinist.  It is logic.  Final -s
_never_ becomes -i in any standard plural formation.

>They have vague notions of how the western Classical languages
>treat plurals. They then apply them often facetiously and almost
Things applied facetiously are one thing - but the abusers of _virii_ and
_penii_ quoted here seem to use these things thinking that (a) they are the
correct forms, and (b) they are clever to do so.

If such people actually paid more attention to _English_ (i.e. their own
language), they would discover:
1. Their are some words ending in -us which, in technical usage, change the
-us to -i, e.g. locus, loci; fungus, fungi; radius, radii; cactus, cacti
etc.
2. Their are some words ending in -is which have -es in the plural, e.g.
crisis, crises; analysis, analyses; thesis, theses; parenthesis,
parentheses etc.

By applying 1, they could arrive at *viri (but don't) which, tho as
incorrect as *prospecti, is at least an understandable derivation.
By applying 2, they would arrive at _penes_ which is correct, tho not
common in English.

[snip]
>I gather it must be very hard for someone educated in a particular
>discipline to hear or read the lingo mangled so badly - but look
>at it this way: This is simply langauge change in action.
Yes, unnecesarily introducing quite unwarranted _irregularities_ into their
own language.  Not the way language change normally works.

The words in question have well established _regular_ plurals in normal
use: viruses, penises.

>Perhaps
>in a hundred years time these facetious terminations will become
>more regularly used.
They may - tho I must sincerely hope not - be more frequently used; there
is no way they will be regular.

It is the distortion and lack of respect for _their own language_, born out
pretensious affectation, that I don't like.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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