Posted: Mar 01, 2019 5:59 am
I once read somewhere that as Octopus is based on Greek, not Latin, if we wanted to pluralize it according to the rules of Greek, then we should rightly say 'Octopodes'.
I've never liked particularly liked the borrowing of grammatical rules from Latin into English. 'Curriculum' could quite nicely be pluralized as 'Curriculums' rather than 'Curricula' as far as I'm concerned.
And don't get me started on 'Datum' and 'Data'.
'.... and the data are clear in showing that ...'
'Information' is uncountable in English (Although my students might say something like, 'I got many informations from the website.')
I think that it is countable in Italian (and some other languages) but I think that deploying Latin grammar for English words is ridiculous and is born of snobbery.
After all, we don't worry about saying 'Oh look at all the lovely Kimonos' even though Japanese doesn't have a plural form for most nouns. (They use a classifier system instead, similar to English 'Two head of cattle')
Neither would we worry about Russian where Moskva is the capital of that country but Russians would alter this word to Moskvu in the sentence ' I went to Moscow'. (To do with marking the destination to which one is moving towards...not something we do in English).
I've never liked particularly liked the borrowing of grammatical rules from Latin into English. 'Curriculum' could quite nicely be pluralized as 'Curriculums' rather than 'Curricula' as far as I'm concerned.
And don't get me started on 'Datum' and 'Data'.
'.... and the data are clear in showing that ...'
'Information' is uncountable in English (Although my students might say something like, 'I got many informations from the website.')
I think that it is countable in Italian (and some other languages) but I think that deploying Latin grammar for English words is ridiculous and is born of snobbery.
After all, we don't worry about saying 'Oh look at all the lovely Kimonos' even though Japanese doesn't have a plural form for most nouns. (They use a classifier system instead, similar to English 'Two head of cattle')
Neither would we worry about Russian where Moskva is the capital of that country but Russians would alter this word to Moskvu in the sentence ' I went to Moscow'. (To do with marking the destination to which one is moving towards...not something we do in English).