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Subject:Re: Data and other foreign plurals From:John Renish <John -dot- Renish -at- CONNER -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 21 Mar 1995 11:33:18 PST
My $0.02 worth:
We should, generally, migrate away from foreign plurals into English plurals
and American spellings. I seriously doubt anybody on this list would write
Volkswaegen for Volkswagens or asheikh for sheiks when writing in English.
Most of those who insist on foreign plurals seem to restrict their
insistence to Greek and Latin words. What's so special about a couple of
dead languages--is this some atavistic Sholasticism at work? Even the
foreign plural crowd falls off the purity wagon with such common words as
scholars (help me out, here, Latinists--scholarae or scholari, perhaps
others, depending on gender and case, right?). Most Americans use data as
either singular (usually) or plural, depending on the context. Only the
terminally fussy would insist on datum, cacti (not even Old World
plants--now *there's* a puzzle), octopi (or octopodes, more properly), ad
nauseum.
John -dot- Renish -at- conner -dot- com
My statements are my own and do not represent Conner Peripherals, Inc.
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