Hi, Wednesday, October 29, 2003, 4:40:11 AM, you wrote:
> Ok I finally have to ask why everyone here uses the term LXen when referring > to their LX in plural. I must be slow but I can't for the life of me figure it > out. LXes yes, it sounds right but LXen throws me every time. > vic I've always assumed it's from a German way of forming plurals. How it became established I don't know. Perhaps it's because some English words ending in -x still form the plural that way. This is because Old English, like German, had several different ways of forming plurals, on of which is to add '-en' - child/children, tunge/tungan (tongue/tongues). The language has become simplified over the years. One way in which people learn to use an unfamiliar term is by analogy, for example children learn dog/dogs etc. and by analogy say man/mans, mouse/mouses etc. until they learn the correct forms. I think 'LXen' is an analogy with words ending in -x, like ox/oxen. However, I can't think of any more examples, so perhaps it's more of an analogy with German, where affing -n or -en is still common. Personally I think the plural should be LXs - not LXes or LX's (especially not LX's!) - because that is the normal way of doing it for abbreviations. I think of LX as an abbreviation, not as a word, even though it is really the Latin numeral for 60. If it was a word then LXes might be ok, as it is for 'foxes' and 'indexes'. Misguided people who think the plural of 'index' is 'indices' might prefer to call their LXs 'Lices'. -- Cheers, Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
