On Tue, 2003-08-12 at 21:26, David Walser wrote: > Adam Williamson wrote: > > On Tue, 2003-08-12 at 16:59, Philip Webb wrote: > > > >> the rule for English is to use Latin plurals > >> or go over to an English plural if the word becomes very common. > >> but you never take a Latin plural & then add another plural to it. > > > > Ahhh, so naive. There's no RULES in English. Merely vague guidelines :). > > > > Some words stay with the grammatical rules of their originating > > language. Some don't. There's really no clear-cut guidelines as to which > > fall into which category. It's not as simple as popularity (media is an > > extremely common word in English, but retains the Latin plural form). > > All you can ever do in English is give a guide to current common usage. > > Always the optimist :o) Maybe it's because you're in the UK (IIRC). > You wouldn't want to give a guide to the conventional ways Americans > destroy the language, believe me :o)
Well, yeah. It being the *English* language, I obviously meant "guide to current common usage by English people". You colonials don't count. ;) -- adamw
