Talk:English plural

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[edit] Pronunciation of es

So, the article states:

Where a noun ends in a sibilant sound—such as s, sh, x, soft ch—the plural is formed by adding es (also pronounced as z with a neutral vowel sound or short i)
  • What is a "neutral vowel sound"?
  • "dishes" sounds a little like it ends in "fizz", but "witches", "glasses" and "boxes" sound like they end in "ez" sounding like "fez". Not neutral and not a "short i".

--Yath 17:48, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would guess what is meant here by "neutral vowel sound" is schwa, but perhaps it would would be more accurate to take a wider interpretation of neutral as lax. This would encompass schwa, unstressed short e, and unstressed short i, rather than being distinct from the short i sound. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 21:59, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] viri?

what is viri as a singular word

Fake Latin Jeff Worthington 00:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Snob plurals

'Snob plural' sounds rather biased to me, even if such an esteemed source as Eric Partridge did call them that. Is there a more neutral term for these? Hairy Dude 06:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, but I think some usage like that is extended far beyond the British hunting upper class. To me, "a herd of antelope" sounds completely normal (although "two lion" doesn't). A friend of mine who lived among English-speaking Athabaskan Indians in Alaska says they always use unmarked "bear" for the plural ("two bear"). Angr/talk 08:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I hear "pair" used in this way ("two pair of pants") a lot here in the Philadelphia area. Jeff Worthington 00:42, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I use a lot of these plurals.Cameron Nedland 00:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] children

child children (with the original stem extension -r-)

I hypothesise that child belongs to the class of those W Germanic words which originally had a plural in -er (English being a WG language). See German Blatt : Blätter, Rind : Rinder and Kind : Kinder (Kind means 'child'). Another common plural morpheme was -en, as still present in English in the word ox : oxen. In Dutch (also WG), this -en became the most universal plural mark, (almost) like -s did in English. At one point the Dutch started to add their now 'regular' -en even to words which until then had preserved their plural in -er, so that the plural of kind became kind+er+en. I'm telling this whole story because kinderen is strikingly similar to English children. (I am however consciously ignoring the fact that child has an 'l' in it where the other languages have an 'n', hoping it doesn't undermine my fine little theory.) 217.251.115.53 07:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know much about its origins, but some dialects do use childer as a plural form of child. --Kjoonlee 23:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maori plurals

This article is meant to be about mainstream international English, not about localised usages. Dialects such as Cockney, Geordie and New York English can be discussed in the right place - their own articles. The same applies to New Zealand usages. The space taken up by the digression into Maori grammar was out of proportion and over-heavy for this article - more than the space given to French, Hebrew, Japanese or Inuktitut. I have heard of bureaux, chateaux, seraphim, samurai, kimonos, futons and Inuit, but I have never come across any of the Maori words mentioned (except kiwi). Is the average English speaker expected to? Also, the article digressed rather alarmingly into politics and ethnic matters.

I don't disagree with a brief mention of Maori, properly linked, but we have to keep it in proportion within the whole article. The Inuktitut section needs repositioning anyway, whatever the other issues are. Can we come to some consensus on this?

EM

If an english speaker from New Zealand says these are common words, then I think they should stay. The section doesn't really take up that much space, anyway. I'd be fine with adding more examples to other languages, instead, since they are slim. --71.169.130.63 16:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I vote to keep it. The section seems pretty well proportionned in its current state with regard to the sections on plurals from other languages. All pretty common words in NZ English as well: kowhai = a kind of tree / colour yellow, marae = meeting house, tui = a kind of native bird and waka = canoe / car. 203.97.173.115 12:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a page about collective plurals?

I was looking for a page mentioning the difference between UK and US pluralisation of collective nouns.

For instance, do you say "U2 are playing a concert tonight" or "U2 is playing a concert tonight"?

Is there a page on Wikipedia about that phenomenon? I don't see anything in the Manual_of_Style about it either.

See American and British English differences#Singular and plural for nouns Angr (talk • contribs) 07:11, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. But there's no preference in the Manual_of_Style? Anything goes?

The Manual of Style's rules for British vs. American usage are basically to use the form of English prevalent in the country being discussed in the article (British English in articles about Britain or Britons, American English in articles about America or Americans, Australian English in articles about Australia or Australians, etc.). See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling). The main exception is with quotation marks: here, the MoS simply splits the difference between American and British usage and does so for all articles: use "double quotation marks" for quotes, reserving 'single quotation marks' for quotes within quotes (American usage), but use logical placement of periods/full stops and commas (i.e. place them outside the quotation marks if they're not part of the original quote) (British usage). I don't think the issue of "U2 is" vs. "U2 are" is explicitly addressed in the MoS, but I think it can be inferred from the spelling guidelines. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again. hostile17 00:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plurals of nouns ending in -o

Perhaps the entry on such plurals needs revising. After some research, I find that only TOMATO, POTATO, HERO, ECHO and NEGRO always take -es in the plural. Some words may or may not take -es (MANGO, MOSQUITO, e.g.) but it would appear that contrary to the entry most nouns ending in -o take -s only. I seem to remember from university that only words which entered the language before a certain time take the, thus old, -es form. Crocutaza 17:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Defective Nouns

Good points but I think that tiding and credential do exist in the singular. "I received a tiding of good news." "His most important credential is his PhD." The Oxford_English_Dictionary also lists each of this words in the singular but adds that they appear "(usually in pl.)". I agree that this is their most common form but think they ought not be listted as forms that only exist in the plural. This, clearly, is not a point that's important enough to fight over. I'm just putting in here FYI in case the author would like to modify this. Interlingua talk 13:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fish

The article states that "fishes" is the plural when different species are referred to, and "fish" for a collection of the animals. I was going to ask about the phrase "swim with the fishes", but this would seem to obey the rule. Can a reference be given for this rule? My understanding (although I'm willing to be corrected if wrong) was that "fishes" can be used in both senses.

dictionary.com says, of "fishes", "especially referring to two or more kinds or species" (my emphasis). On the same page, the American Heritage Dictionary makes no distinction between the use of the two plurals. — Paul G 09:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

There are fish that do have an s to form the plural. For example, shark - sharks. However it does seem that rather a large number of fish species fall into the no s on a plural. Compound nouns, such as goldfish follow the rule for fish. Then there are types such as guppy that as a plural is guppies. Here they y -> ies obviously dominates.

[edit] "Greek origin" words

The entry states: "Final us in nouns of Greek origin "properly" add -es. These words are also heard with the Latin -i instead, which is sometimes considered "over-correct"." The words listed here, sadly, are all Latin words. They may have came to Latin via Greek, but they are still in English from Latin, not Greek. Furthermore, the use of "cactuses" is a modern contrivance, the proper form IS "cacti" per my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (this fits all the other words as well). I am making the change and enlosing a citation.Squad51 18:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I also removed the "octopodes" plural, and related comment at the bottom. This is an urban legend (I've seen it mentioned in at least one book, and will cite it when I find it).Squad51 18:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not very sure about this urban legend claim. Octopi is rather dodgy since the word was not only of Greek origin but, when used in Latin, third declension, not second. I suppose it's common enough in English to be at least borderline standard though. Octopodes works in both Latin and Greek, but is so uncommon in English that I think Octopuses is the form to recommend. garik 15:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Re the plurals of octopus, Chamber's Dictionary prefers "octopuses". It also lists "octopodes" but describes that as archaic, and flat-out states that "octopi is wrong". However, the -pus ending in platypus has the same origins as for octopus, so surely the plural of platypus would be "platypuses", not "platypi". As for the reference to "cactus" in Merriam-Webster's, I checked that dictionary online. It lists both "cacti" and "cactuses". It apparently prefers the former (by placing it first) but makes no statement about that being the "proper" form (to the exclusion of any other form), nor any statement about "cactuses" being a "modern contrivance". (Chamber's also prefers "cacti" but allows "cactuses".) I think the best advice is that once a word is fully adopted into English, it should be treated as an English word. After all, English has absorbed 10s of thousands of words from other languages (it is not called "the great sponge" for nothing!). Is every borrowed, stolen and smuggled word to be inflected in the manner of its original (or previous) language? What a mess that would be! AlistairLW 05:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree. There's no reason why the Greek or Latin plural should be more "correct" than an English one. garik 10:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General American

The article states:

   Note that phonetic transcriptions provided in this article are for General American.

Given that this is an article about the English language, should we not use Received Pronunciation? Paul Roberts 10:48, 28th November 2006

Can't see any particular reason to do so. The differences in pronunciation are covered elsewhere. And as a speaker of British English who does not hail from the small corner of England where something that approximates to Received Pronunciation is spoken, I find RP just as foreign and "odd" as American! Snalwibma 11:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plural conversion software

There is an implementation of converting nouns to their plural form in Emacs Lisp. It's probably not entirely correct as a reference, but may have examples of nouns that aren't taken up in the Wikipedia article. It's free software, so people are free to learn what they may from it and see how it can help with the article. This is assuming individuals can already or are willing to "live dangerously" and read source code.

--71.169.130.63 19:02, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British Isles

This may be a good place to ask whether BI is a plural or singular noun and how should it be used in say "The British Isles is/are a group of islands"? Opinions with citations would be welcome :) Abtract 11:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I (an American) would say "The British Isles are a group of islands." Using a singular verb after a plural noun usually sounds wrong to my ear, whether or not that plural noun is part of a compound word that could conceivably describe a single entity. One could argue that "are" still disagrees with "group", but that doesn't bother me so much for some reason. On the other hand, I would say "The Hawaiian archipelago is a group of islands," because "archipelago" is a singular noun. I'm afraid I don't have any citations other than of Wikipedia itself: American and British English differences#Singular and plural for nouns —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Furrykef (talk • contribs) 19:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC).
I just realized that even then there are exceptions. For instance, I would say "The United States is a country", not "The United States are a country". I guess the reason why is that I consider "the United States" a single entity. Language is just weird, I guess... - furrykef (Talk at me) 03:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Not weird, just subtle! You say "the United States is" when you are referring to the single entity often called the USA, but if you were referring to the 50 states as individual entities you might say "the states do not all have the same laws", or maybe something like "the 'United' States are not all in agreement..." The British Isles behaves the same way: "The British Isles is a collection of islands shared by a number of nations"; "The British Isles are surrounded by the stormy waters of the North Atlantic and the North Sea." Snalwibma 10:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does one say "kinds of bats" or "kinds of bat"?

Funny enough, this article itself uses both constructions: in one place it says "kinds of living things", and in another, "forms of plural". My understanding was that the second noun must agree in number with the first. I would say "The flying fox is a kind of bat", but "There are many kinds of bats." Very often I see the singular always used for the second noun, and I'm wondering if either form is an error, or if it's a regional difference (e.g., different between American and British English), or if these forms are just interchangeable. Whatever the answer is, perhaps it should be discussed in the article? I don't think it is currently. - furrykef (Talk at me) 19:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I think (my POV) that "kinds of bat" is more correct. It's nothing to do with the two nouns agreeing in number - no more than in the case of "sacks of wool". "Kind of bat" is a noun phrase (a kind of compound noun, even), with "of bat" performing an adjectival function, and you would therefore pluralise by adding an S to the noun part only - as in "attorneys general" or "passersby". Maybe, in fact, a mention of this problem could be added to the "compund nouns" section of the article. I say "more correct", but I'm not inclined to be dogmatic about it, and I think it comes down to what sounds best in a given context. Based on many years of editing texts written by American and British authors (but with no real hard evidence), I'd say that "kinds of bats" is more American usage, and "kinds of bat" more British. Snalwibma 10:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] -y in proper names

> Germany Germanys (as in The two Germanys were unified in 1990)

The use of "two Germanies" appears to be more frequent than "two Germanys" (I don't think it can be called wrong if it's even used as a book title by renowned historians such as Mary Fulbrook, The Two Germanies, Henry Ashby Turner, The two Germanies since 1945, Peter Edgington, The politics of the two Germanies) as is "little Germanies" in contrast to "little Germanys", and it's almost always "two Sicilies" rathern than "two Sicilys". There's certainly style guides promoting the spelling as championed here, but it's obviously not commonly accepted. --128.176.234.236 13:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it's based on the principle that you don't change -y to -ie- in proper nouns (two Jennys, not two Jennies). It is therefore arguably more consistent to have Germanys rather than Germanies, but I agree that common usage is generally to be preferred to prescriptivism as a guide. garik 13:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Courts Martial

Are there other plurals like this?

I believe so. To find out for sure, check out this excellent article: English plural. You'll be glad you did.—DCGeist 09:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] plurals of noun phrases

The section under "Plurals of compound nouns" discussing plurals of noun phrases is severely confused. The reason you say "men about town" and "women of the street", but "jack-in-the-boxes" and "ham on ryes" has nothing to do with whether their heads form regular or irregular plurals. It has to do with whether the phrase is perceived as a noun with modifiers, or just a multi-word noun. A "man about town" is a man, so its plural is "men about town", and likewise with "women of the street". But a "jack-in-the-box" is not a "jack", and a "ham on rye" is not a ham, so they become "jack-in-the-boxes" and "ham on ryes". (As compared to "jacks of diamonds" and "hams of Spain".) The claim that "men-of-war" is the correct plural of "man-of-war" is absurd, as a quick trip to google will show (871 hits for "portuguese men-of-war", vs 24,200 for "portuguese man-of-wars"). Likewise, it is not "generally regarded as acceptable to pluralize either the first major term or the last" in terms like "jack-in-the-box". Google turns up 43,600 "jack-in-the-boxes", but only 620 "jacks-in-the-box". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.180.28.94 (talk) 01:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

I agree—change it. Ideally, however, we need better sources than google. garik 17:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] billiard

Is there any evidence for the existence of this term as a purported numeral? — Paul G 16:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The OED syas nothing about it. -- Dominus 18:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Continental Europeans use it. See fr:Échelles longue et courte. The British use thousand billion instead of billiard. - TAKASUGI Shinji 01:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
The article is about English plurals, and the question is whether there is such a word in English. -- Dominus 13:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I know. I mean billiard is used as a number only in French, German, etc. Americans don't use -illiard. - TAKASUGI Shinji 23:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Milliard is archaic for a thousand million, what I used to call an American billion and now everyone calls a billion. I assume billiard existed too, according to the wiki article (Names_of_large_numbers meaning a thousand million million. Cyta 09:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] baths

The article says it's pronounced with a 'voiced fricative' (th as in the, rather than th as in think) but I certainly don't say it that way (I speak British English and pronounce the a in bath short as in cat, not baRth as in father). Could we put this as a pronunciation that varies? Cyta 09:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and have changed it. garik 10:03, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aegis

What would the plural be for the word Aegis? Aeges? Aegises? Would it differ based on context, as with "fish"? Nahka 15:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Aegises or aegides, the latter being the etymologically consistent one. The only contextual difference is that aegides will probably be perceived to be more academic and/or formal, but since aegis is a pretty formal word anyway, I imagine that either plural is suitable in most contexts. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 13:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Plaural

the usage "plaural" is common and correct on the American East Coast.

It may well be, but we need a source for this. Perhaps more importantly, is "plaural" meant to represent the pronunciation? On first sight, I assumed this was about spelling, but that seems unlikely. And if it is a pronunciation issue, can we have it in IPA please? Other questions also raise themselves: who determines that this is "correct"? Do we mean standard usage? Most importantly, why does this matter? This article isn't about how the word plural is pronounced; it varies in other ways in other places too. garik 19:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the more I think about this, the less convinced I am that it has any business remaining in the article. Deleted. garik 19:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error becoming acceptable

The most common error that I see regarding the use or misuse of the plural noun is the use of the word "emails." Email, meaning electronic mail, is both singular and plural. Someone may receive one piece of mail (email) or many pieces of mail (email). Since it would be incorrect to say, "I received lots of "mails", it is just as incorrect to say, "I received lots of "emails."

The problem I see with this is that the use of "emails" has spawned a growing acceptance of the misuse of plural nouns in general. It is amazing to see in both the written and spoken word, how educated people increasingly misuse the plural noun.

For example; take some time, on any given day, and listen to the dribble that comes out of the mouths of news reporters. It is atrocious what you will hear when you are paying attention.

I wonder where it will end?

Robert Brandon, Fl —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.35.152.98 (talk) 15:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe you are making a fair comparison here. I believe that in common usage, "email" is taken as a shortened form of "email message" (or perhaps "piece of email") and as such it is entirely appropriate to pluralize it with an "s" when referring to several electronic messages. This is similar to how "agenda" has become a common shortening for "list of agenda" (see the article) and we refer to muliple "agendas" even though "agenda" is already the plural of "agendum." Unless you do not accept the usage, "I received an email," you cannot compare "email" directly to "mail" because there is no similar common usage of "mail" as a singular message (i.e. a shortening of "piece of mail"), such as "I received a mail today." To sum up, I think it is reasonable to say both "I received a piece of mail (email)" and "I received several pieces of mail (email)," but also "I received an email" and "I received several emails" if you accept the usage of "email" as a shortening of "email message" or "piece of email." Blazotron (talk) 19:20, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inoramus is already plural

I am considering adding ignoramus to the list of words better known in the plural. Ignoramus is from latin, ignoro ignorare, meaning "to be ignorant of" thus ignoramus means "we are ignorant of" which is first person plural. The first person singular is "ignoro" however you dont say "you are an I am ignorant of" the second person plural, "you are ignorant of", is "ignoras" however this doesn't agree with the first person perspective. should I list "ignoro" or "ignoras" as the original singular or or does this just not apply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.240.35.153 (talk) 00:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

This is not a Latin dictionary, so it's quite irrelevant what grammatical form a word used in English originally had in Latin. Any English dictionary will simply state "ignoramus noun (pl. ignoramuses)". --Espoo (talk) 22:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fractional Number Usage

What is the proper usage in fractional situations. ex: 'I have 1.5 pounds of meat'. If someone were 1,200 miles away it doesn't seem proper usage to say 'they are thousands of miles away'. This is addressed in the article under the plurals of numbers but it isn't clear if the number used as a noun should be at least 2 complete units of that number. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.132.45 (talk) 18:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Data" in scientific usage

I reworded the comments about there being a US/UK divide in usage of "data" as singular in scientific writing, because there is no real divide. In information sciences (computer science, etc.) "data" is often treated like a singular mass entity, such as "information," but in most other fields in both the US and UK, "data" is still treated as plural, as in "the data are." I frequently read and journals from both English and American publishers, and there is little difference in practice. There is some debate in both places about accepting the common usage and treating data as singular, but this has not been adopted in most serious journals. See http://www.eisu2.bham.ac.uk/johnstf/revis006.htm for more. Note that I did not references this in the article because Nature is actually published by McMillan, originally a British company, now owned by a German company, even though it is not thought about as a British authority in the scientific world, but rather just a sceintific authority.Blazotron (talk) 19:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The article already had plenty of evidence/sources for the British plural usage preference, and it now has additional ones for the US singular usage preference. Please do not remove valid, reputable sources like the American Heritage Dictionary, which bases its entries on scientific analysis of actual usage, and please do not replace this sort of scientifically valid source with linguistic musings by individual scientists, who are in fact amateurs in this matter despite their or others' claims that they're authorities. Modern dictionaries are based on linguistic data collected according to scientific methods, but many scientists in other fields still think that their regional or personal preferences and prescriptive rules are authoritative and know very little about the science of linguistics. The link http://www.eisu2.bham.ac.uk/johnstf/revis006.htm is already in the article specifically as proof for UK plural preference since it references only UK journals in a surprisingly provincial way in this global age. --Espoo (talk) 22:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)