RT, this is stale thread, but it is so seldom I agree with you I have to revive it.
> Except it sounds a lot like "insurances". An appropriate way would be > "precocious-looking "likenesses" of Jesus". > RT Perfect, and now you all understand the English language. When in doubt re-cast the sentence. That is a dictum from the best practical practicioner of the language today (and I am his desciple, having been quoted in his oringinal book "On Language"). Wm. Safire (in his language columns, not his weekday job as political commentator) is probably the most "fair and balanced" guru of usage and grammar. Not too strict and not too liberal. He would prefer that you say "medium" if you are referring to a single source of news, rather than media. But he is quite happy with stadiums for multiple football fields - as stadia might be a bit too much. Too often those with some language mistake the vernacular, the Latin and the Greek. With no offense intended to any of a differing sexual preference I make an example. The popular press has come up with a word, "homophobic", to imply a fear of homosexuals. They confuse the Latin "homo" (meaning mankind) with the Greek "homo" (meaning same), then they combine it with the Greek "phobia". So in Greek a "homophobic" would be someone who was afraid of being bored by sameness (ok, I stretched the point). Pardon me for picking a sensitive topic to some for the example, but it was an obvious choice as the words are used often. In the Latin the Christ's name is Jesu, so the "us" ending doesn't apply. Enough, RT has it right, recast the sentence. Churchill was once accused of ending a sentence with a preposition, he promised that "ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put". English grammar is flexible, it comes from a mish-mosh of Gaelic (Briton), Angles, Saxons and Norman French - and when Caxton put it down in the first dictionary of English he was doing a bit of guessing. How can a non native deal with a language where the word "present" is a verb meaning "to give" if the accent is on the last(or in the US the first) syllable, or a noun meaning gift if the accent is equal on the syllables, or a place in time if the accent is also equal. A fine language with lots of meaning, but one that can lead to misinterpretation if not cast properly. In Fragment of an Agon T.S. Eliot put this phrase in the mouth of his Sweeney. "I've gotta use words when I talk to you". Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
