Talk:English plural

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 (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=octopus) 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

Assuming it's a regular second declension noun:

Singular: (nom)virus (voc)virus (acc)virum (gen)viri (dat)viro (abl)viro

Plural: (nom)viri (voc)viri (acc)viros (gen)virorum (dat)viris (abl)viris

user:sjc

I still don't think Latin usage is as important as English usage:

• "Of the many viruses that affect us ..." for everyday use
• "Analysis identified 13 viri of Staphlococcus ..." for scientific use.
• I did see "Stradivarii" the other day, and somehow that seemed all right. Ortolan88

I added a note that there is no Latin plural of "virus". Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, July 6, 2002

I completely agree. I don't for one minute think it's a second declension noun because there would also be a conflict with vir,viris [m] man. Ergo it must be the 4th declension noun for poison which would make any putative plural vires. Viruses makes sense. sjc

4th declension plural would be virûs (with long u), but virus is second declension (genitive in -î). Face it, it's just a freak word in Latin, and in English the regular plural (add -es) is the most used and accepted form. --Brion VIBBER, Sunday, July 7, 2002

--- 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

I can say with certainty that Japanese has no plural. One kimono, two kimono. Only ignorant gaijin (one gaijin, two gaijin) put Ss on the ends of Japanese nouns. ;-> --the Epopt

Okay, but do you have a recommendation for forming plurals of English words of Japanese origin? Off the top of my head, I'd guess kimonos but gaijin. Ortolan88

On the theory that we're trying to be descriptive, "kimonos." See my edit. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, July 6, 2002

A terminal S is not possible in Japanese, so I form the "plurals" of Japanese words by doing nothing. Your mileage may vary, especially if you're the sort who talks about one "kudo." --the Epopt

I'm the sort who knows that the plural would be "kudoi". But lots of people would say "two kimonos" rather than "two kimono", and that's worth mentioning. Vicki Rosenzweig

A divagation... my roommate and I are otaku, but I decided that sounded silly, so I decided to make up a plural... following my usual pattern, though, I preferred to fetch an irregular plural... for a while it was a pitched battle between Hebrew ("otakim") and Inuktitut... but Inuktitut won out, and I've decided that we are a pair of otakuit. - montréalais

---

On the subject of octopus/octopi, I have heard one stalk of broccoli refered to as a broccolus. Of course, this was by the same fellow who maintains that the plural of Jell-O is Jell-I, so take it for what it's worth.

Broccoli is singular, actually a diminutive of brocca, stalk, in Italian, but tell your friend that the plural of stewardess is stewardae. Ortolan88

The plural of "mongoose," by the way, as should be obvious to the most casual observer, is "polygoose."

shorely shome mishtake, guv'nor. The plural of mongoose as anyone knows is of course mongeese... sjc

No. The plural is "a mongoose, and while you're at it, send me a second mongoose." (Like the French chacal.)

And of course, the martinus. "If I wanted more than one, I'd ask for it!" - montréalais

---

I added a bit about words from languages that English took little from, which are treated as if they were native, rather than by the rules of their original languages (fewer English writers and editors know Inuit or Algonkian languages than know French or Latin). Vicki Rosenzweig

---

platypodes is plain wrong too. See discussion above. The gist is that we speak English, not Greek. The fact is that many Americans pluralize these words with an -i and many American dictionaries include that plural. That is what is called English usage and that is why I put in the comment "not generally accepted". If everybody keeps saying it, it will become correct and there is nothing any of us can do about it. In the meantime, the -podes plural is misleading and I have parenthesized it, while strengthening the warning against the -i plural. Ortolan88

---

From dictionary.com (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=insignia): "Insignia in Latin is the plural form of insigne, but it has long been used in English as both a singular and a plural form: The insignia was visible on the wingtip. There are five insignia on various parts of the plane. From the singular use of insignia comes the plural insignias, which is also acceptable. The Latin singular insigne is rare and may strike some readers as pedantic."

---

Congratulations on a very impressive article. However, at the very beginning I've just found rather a silly mistake: It says ordinary English plurals are UNIVERSALLY pronounced /z/. Well, half of them -- or at least a third -- are not. You mention some examples yourselves a few lines further down (proofs). In short, if the singular ends with an unvoiced consonant, the s which is added is a /s/ rather than a /z/. Any pronouncing dictionary will show you that.

I don't want to interfere in this otherwise perfect article, I just wanted to tell you (all).

Some examples: laughs, wits, kicks, rats, stops, ... KF

---

Yeah, that's probably too strong a statement: the fact is that the plural morpheme is universally "Z", but that it degrades to an "S" in the contexts you mention; i.e., after an unvoiced non-sibilant consonant. I'll find a better way to express that. --LDC

---

I honestly think the SAMPA solution makes it worse with all that strange and thorny orthography that requires the reader to go someplace else (and still not necessarily to understand any better).

I had just written, when I got caught by an edit conflict,

... is usually pronounced as z except when it follows an unvoiced consonant, when it is pronounced as s. For example, sleds and sets.

Even though I wrote it, I think this is a better solution. If we aren't going to SAMPAize the whole article (and please don't) it is really intimidating to put SAMPA at the beginning of an otherwise informative and interesting article (and still no example of the s sound is provided). Ortolan88

Eh, take it out if you don't like it. No biggie. --Brion

I've made several minor changes (-es as /iz/; -æ is less not more preferable than -ae; 3rd decl. -us can also go -ora), and have taken out the following puzzling comment:

• The plurals of child and brother as children and brethren are considered self-conscious coinages, just as in VAX and VAXen, although considerably older.

Children is the normal plural, not at all self-conscious, and people don't say VAXren or Unixren. I presume it was meant to say that oxen is used as a model to make self-conscious plurals like Unixen. I'm not sure how to phrase that: someone else could try if they think it's worth mentioning. - Gritchka

I wrote the "puzzling" comment. The wording may be faulty, but I'm pretty sure the information is correct, that is, that children and brethren were intentionally (and, thus, self-consciously) coined in the 16th century but meant to sound older, same trick as with Unixen and VAXen, but a long time ago. The effort was such a success that we now think brethren is much older than it is, and that children is the normal form, but I'll have to mine my sources to demontrate this. Ortolan88

PS -- And, on the -ren comment, children was formed by changing childer to children, not by adding -ren to child. Same goes for brethren, same pluralizing technique as ox -> oxen. Ortolan88

---

It seems to me that, in formal English, the plural of "person" is "persons", whereas in informal English, the plural of "persons" is "people". Does this deserve a mention?

Well, persons is used only in extremely formal situations, such as law courts, in phrases like "person or persons unknown". People is both a singular (the Basque people) and a plural (of person), but is always treated as a plural in use (the Basque people are). Probably worth a mention, but the distinction is not quite as you put it. Ortolan88

Well, that's exactly how I would have put it. "People" as in "a people", "great peoples of the Earth", etc is a separate lexical item from "people are strange". There are two words here: "people/peoples" and "person/people", the latter of which has a variant "person/persons" in legalese register. (Of course, "people/peoples" is fairly formal itself.) --Brion 02:57 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

I regard people/peoples as the same linguistically as fish/fishes, probably from my (long-gone) days of reading the KJV of the Bible. Koyaanis Qatsi

I would find that problematic, as singular "people" always refers to a (nation-like) group of people, while I can't imagine that use for singular "fish". Plural "fish" can work like plural "people", and plural "fishes" may perhaps cover multiple species of fish which is vaguely similar to "peoples", but that's about it. --Brion 03:04 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Oh boy ... trying to keep up. Let's see ... from what I remember of the usage, it went "people" == people of one nation, and "peoples" == people of x nation + people of y nation + people of z nation, etc. Is this different from the "fish" usage? I don't see the difference. Koyaanis Qatsi

Hmm, could you make some example sentences that precisely show the parallels? If nothing else, this should be a fun exercise. :) --Brion 03:24 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Well. Given time to research, maybe. I hope so, because now I'm curious about it too. First I will have to find my Bible. Koyaanis Qatsi

this page (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/kjv2www?specfile=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Freligion%2Fkjv%2Fkjv-pub.o2w&query=people&docs=text&sample=1-100&grouping=work) shows several hundred occurences of "people" in typical current usage. This one (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/kjv2www?specfile=/texts/english/religion/kjv/kjv-pub.o2w&act=surround&offset=5679113&tag=Revelation,+chapter+10&query=peoples) and this one (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/kjv2www?specfile=/texts/english/religion/kjv/kjv-pub.o2w&act=surround&offset=5701229&tag=Revelation,+chapter+17&query=peoples) show two usages of "peoples." I had (mis)remembered it being fairly common, and apparently it was not. Anyway, if you could look at it and please comment, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, Koyaanis Qatsi

---

How about "dozen", "hundred", "thousand", "million", etc.? How would you treat these in this article?

Took a shot at it. Kind of tricky. See article. Ortolan88

I've just been messing about with your prose and I wondered about removing the following:

"The preposition of is used when speaking of non-specific items identified by pronouns: two hundred of these, three dozen of those. The of is not used for a number of specific items: three hundred oriental rugs. However, if the pronoun is included with the specific item, the of is used: five million of those dollar bills."

It's not really about plurals, but about how we describe amounts. "Some of", "Several of", "one of", "none of" follow the same rule. Also, if we're keeping it we should mention "... of the" as well.

Actually, I think it is about plurals because how we describe amounts is one of the ways we do plurals. The question was, what about dozen? This is part of the answer. In this case what is missing is the specific half of the same form, three dozen of linen napkins. We would either add the older specific form, three dozen of linen napkins or drop the discussion of three dozen of those. I think I'd prefer to add it. Is there an article on describing amounts? Could be, I guess. Ortolan88

There's another issue with numbers/amounts -- two dollars; two people (or persons); two hundred? (not hundreds). yet we say "dozens of", "hundreds of", etc. Random832[?]

---

The article is very pointed in saying that "billiards," with reference to the game, never appears in a singular form. But a singular form of the word does still hang around in its adjectival form, as in "billiard balls", "billiard table". And perhaps a better example would be (as in, from the Hunting of ther Snark), a "Billiard Maker"--here "billiard" is very clearly a noun used as an adjective; and its a singular noun. Isn't it? I will leave it for someone who knows better to change the article.

___

just a word on the mongoose issue... ive asked many people, and apparently the plural is 'mongooses' but im convinced it should be 'mongeese'