Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: irregular English plurals (was: RE:

Thomas Wier wrote:
>Quoting Andrew Smith <andrew.smith20@...>:
>
> > On Fri, 24 May 2002 19:52:56 +0100, And Rosta <a-rosta@...>
>wrote:
> >
> > >Nik:
> > >> I can't speak for John, but for me "the team are" is as ungrammatical
>as
> > >> "the man are"
> > >
> > >And Tom Wier & John Cowan, like good North Americans, concur.
> > >
> > >--And.
> >
> > As a good Brit, of course "Manchester United is" sounds terrible, and a
> > plural agreement is obligatory.
>
>Of course, no North American would likely say that either, but
>entirely different reasons. 8)
>
> > Rather like someone insisting on using "one die" instead of
> > the common "one dice, two dice" [Apologies if you do use die naturally
>as
> > the singular of dice, you never know]
>
>For gamers, I'm given to understand that the distinction "die : dice"
>is quite robust.
As a part-time gamer, I must weigh in and say that that's far from always
so, IME. Both "die : dice" and "dice : dice" are common, "dice : dices" not
unheard.

                                                           Andreas

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