Per Jessen wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Per Jessen wrote:Fora and vira should both be the proper plural terms (for forums[snip] AIUI "Vira" is not and cannot be a word. The word "virus" in Latin is a mass noun, something like "air" in English. It has no proper plural. It means something like "pervading evil influence".What can I say - in Danish it's used quite commonly as the plural of virus. Given that it's also listed in wikipedia, I would say it IS already a word, even its correct use may be debated.
It is presumably formed by use of latin rules for forming plurals.
However, these rules DO NOT APPLY to this word, as it is a latin
word which HAS NO PLURAL. So, if we insist that this word in English
needs a plural, then the english rules for forming plurals must
be followed. This means that the proper plural is "viruses".
The usual rules for forming plurals in English is that
if the word is a foreign "loan" word, it may be pluralized
following the rules of the foreign word, unless it has been
in English so long that it is accepted as if "native". Such
words may survive for some time with two plurals. An example
of a word which has just about completely made that transition
is "datum". Interestingly, it is the plural which has survived
as the singular form as well. Another word with this interesting
property is "alumnus" which also survives almost exclusively
in the plural "alumni" for both singular and plural. "Stratum"
is in the process of acquiring the plural "stratums".
In this case, there is no latin plural for "virus".
Mike
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