Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 February 3

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February 3

Plurals of English nouns ending in "i" [?]

Hello, again!

I'm curious about how one pluralises words ending in <consonant> + i. The article on English plural makes no mention of it.

I've always assumed that one simply adds -s in these cases, not -es. (With some very rare exceptions, such as chili chilies, and Wadi Wadies.)

But several dictionaries state that, in words not derived from Latin or Italian, the -es suffix is perfectly acceptable. eg. taxi taxies

As far as I'm aware, the highly respected Oxford English Dictionary frowns upon this doctrine. Does anybody here know how other sources such as New Fowler, Strunk and White, Garner Legal, or Thomas Kane feel about this?

--Thank you! Pine (talk) 00:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I note that none of them approve the addition of an apostrophe.

Never seen "taxies" as a plural (and I speak as a former taxi driver, so I am obviously an expert on any topic you care to name ... ). "The aircraft slowly taxies (v.) to the terminal" cf. "I had to take two taxis (n.) to get home from the airport". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Fowler's Modern English Usage devotes a whole page to "plural anomolies" but doesn't mention words ending in "i". Taxi is an abbreviation of "taximeter cab" so you could (just maybe) make a case that an apostrophe denotes the missing letters. Alansplodge (talk) 02:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

That's drawing a very long bow; but if one could justify it that way, then it'd also apply in the singular, wouldn't it? ("Here comes a taxi' now" - No, I'd rather wait for a 'bus). -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 02:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Point taken. I really like the archery analagy BTW; I might save that for later on. Alansplodge (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall ever seeing "wadies," which must be wadis for off-duty taxies. I'm also sure that kiwi does not derive from Latin, and the plural I see most often (other that "kiwi" for a bunch of birds, the way you'd say "there are lion in the bush") is "kiwis." --- OtherDave (talk) 02:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"There are lion in the bush"? Who would say that? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 04:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Someone who didn't think they were sheep or deer? Actually, I think your right about Lion though. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The OED marks the plural taxies as obsolete, but does record wadies. On the other hand, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate records taxies (after a qualifying "also"), but doesn't mention "wadies." Frankly, I think dictionaries are the best source here, not usage commentators. Dictionaries will give you facts about what is actually used and let you make up your own mind, rather than giving you one person's opinion as some books tend to do. Clearly, taxis and wadis are the most common choice and are therefore least likely to be noticed. Note also alkalies or alkalis. 82.124.101.35 (talk) 03:51, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

According to this source, chilies, taxies and alkalies are the most common exceptions. 82.124.101.35 (talk) 04:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Taxies looks wrong to me. It's a pity though. It ought to be the plural; then we could have "taxis" rhyme with "praxis", as it ought to.

This is the reason I prefer zeroes to zeros — the latter looks to me as though it should rhyme with either CMOS or BIOS (BIOS as in basic in/out system, not as in the plural of "bio"). --Trovatore (talk) 08:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Why, Trov? Because "go" and "do" are inflected as "goes" and "does", so every word that ends in "o" has to follow the same pattern? That sort of thinking - making words look as we think they ought to look - is how we have a word that rhymes with "loco" but is spelt "cocoa" (cf. load, boat, road etc). And why "Napoli", which looks like an Italian plural, was rendered in English as "Naples". And similar examples. Why not "ratioes" or "radioes"? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Those would be better spellings, yes. Heroes, tomatoes. It's too bad the distinction wasn't kept consistent, so that terminal os could be pronounced confidently with the soft /s/ instead of the hard /z/. --Trovatore (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe pronunciation has anything to do with it. Are there any plural nouns whose final s, where preceded by a vowel (houses, ratios, lamas ...) or a vowel sound (voters, ...) is not pronounced /z/? I doubt it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:44, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, I doubt there's any such thing, unless say the plural of pathos is also pathos. But that's because pluralizing s is pronounced /z/. That's why you put the "e" before it in plurals like heroes and tomatoes. As I say, it's just too bad it wasn't done consistently. --Trovatore (talk) 19:51, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

If the plural of Coke is Cokes, the plural of Pepsi must be Pepsis. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 10:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Slightly off topic; but apparently the official plural of the Euro is "Euro" because "Euros" is a homophone for the Greek word meaning to urinate ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

With the [s] or the [z] sound? --Trovatore (talk) 09:45, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

WHAAOE. Linguistic issues concerning the euro. BrainyBabe (talk) 13:57, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that find. Doesn't seem to mention the "urinate" problem, though. --Trovatore (talk) 06:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure I remember being taught the rule, many years ago, that, if a word ends with a vowel other than "e", then the plural should be formed with "es" rather than just "s", but I've run into difficulties over the years with this "rule" because it seems to have so many exceptions. Why are we so inconsistent? Dbfirs 08:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

No big deal. At the end of the day, inconsistencies are just inconsistancies.  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:49, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Whose father?

Quoting from our article John Relyea.

"He was born in Toronto, Canada[2] to Gary Relyea, one of Canada's well-known opera singers and Anna Tamm-Relyea, also a professional singer[3].

John Relyea is a 1998 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia and studied under renowned opera bass Jerome Hines as well as his father."

"his father" means John Relyea's father, not Jerome Hines's father. Is there a concise way to eliminate the ambiguity without naming the father again?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 03:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

How about "... graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and, like his father, studied under renowned opera bass Jerome Hines"? --173.49.13.226 (talk) 04:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I read a different meaning: "Relyea is a 1998 graduate of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music. He studied with his father and also with renowned opera bass Jerome Hines." Bielle (talk) 04:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Bielle's interpretation agrees with the reference. I've taken out "also". Clarityfiend (talk) 04:15, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Classification of sentence

Some grammar books classify sentences into 5 types - 1. assertive (statement), 2. interrogative (question), 3. imperative (command or entreaty), 4. optative (wish) and 5. exclamatory (strong feeling). On the other hand, other grammar books classify sentences into 4 types - 1. assertive (statement), 2. interrogative (question), 3. imperative (command; entreaty, or wish), 4. exclamatory (strong feeling). Wikipedia does the second. So, the controversy surrounds Optative sentence. Is it wrong to classify sentences into 5 types? Please help, I'm confused. --ZZOlak (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have an official "endorsement" or anything; these articles are written by random people like you and me. The article you linked is a very brief overview; our article on Grammatical mood (which is what this type of sentence classification is called) lists many more types, and we have an article specifically on optative mood.

Overall, it's just a matter of how specific you want to be. If you want a general summary, 4 or 5 is fine. If you need to be really specific (for example, if you need to clarify the difference between optative and jussive moods), then you would adopt more specific classes. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be an ambiguity about what the scope of that classification is meant to be. Are you looking for a classification of grammatical sentence types (i.e. different classes of grammatical forms), or a classification of speech acts (i.e. communicative functions a sentence is used for)? These are not the same. If you think of the sentences "Oh that it were possible" and "may you ever prosper", both express "wishes", but grammatically they are quite different. Likewise "what a fine morning!", "oh shit!", "what the heck?" and "oh that's wonderful!" are all "exclamations" of strong feeling, but grammatically they all belong to different classes. So, I doubt either "exclamatory" or "optative" correspond to well-defined formal classes of sentences in English. The next thing you need to consider is that classifications of sentence types are heavily language-dependent. So, what language are you talking about, English? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Of course, classification of sentences (based on their purpose) in the English language. --ZZOlak (talk) 11:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

If you want to strictly look at classification based on purpose, then you should read about Illocutionary force, which refers to the pragmatic goal of a sentence. (For example: "can you pass the salt" is a question, but in actual communication it's not interpreted as a question but as a request or demand.) The classification you gave above is one of grammatical moods, but those moods can convey different types of illocutionary force (as in the example I just gave, where "interrogative" sentences can encode questions or demands). rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't actually say they are "moods", technically, at least not in English. "Mood" is generally taken to be a morphological category of the verb. The types we are dealing with here are syntactically defined (sentences with and without subject-verb inversion, wh-movement etc., overt subjects, etc.) Only in the case of the imperative does the sentence type also correlate with something which in other (inflectional) languages also often is a mood. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't mean to be picky, but all of the link articles give English examples of different moods. I think English definitely does have mood, it just don't mark it morphologically like ancient Greek. The fact that the mood is handled with auxiliary verbs doesn't mean that there is not a grammatically distinct semantic content that can be described by mood. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Sorry, but what I was just trying to explain is that this inherently an oversimplification. You cannot really classify sentences based on their purpose, because there is no one-to-one mapping between sentence types and communicative purposes. Communicative purpose is, strictly speaking, a matter of speech acts, i.e. "utterances", not sentences. However, in English, there are grammatical types of sentences that loosely correlate to classes of communicative acts (statements, questions and so on.) The influential Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al., 1985), §11.1, distinguishes the same four "major types" you found in the Wikipedia article: declaratives, interrogatives, imperatives and exclamatives, plus a number of minor or irregular types that don't fit in any of these main categories. I don't know what exactly you meant by the "optative" type you said you found in some other books, so I can't tell you where in the Quirk et al. scheme they would fit in. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:46, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Possibly any system of typology or of taxonomy can have variations of classification involving differences in combination and separation.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

French words entering English

Why is it that English words that originally entered from French (specifically in the historic period beginning with the Norman invasion, not modern imports), often turn out to be closer in spelling to the Latin words they are derived from than what they looked like in the Old French they entered from. I had a pretty good example but I cannot remember it, so I'll have to give a substandard example: the word choir is derived from Old French quer, but it looks much more like the Latin chorus than the Old French. This example is substandard because it is possible there has been interference from the French chœur, but there are examples where no such interference is present and this still happens. Why? 24.92.70.160 (talk) 15:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Part of the reason is that standard orthography came much later than the linguistic changes you are noting. Spoken language changes are generally treated by many linguists as completely independent from written language changes. People learn to speak before they write; it is quite possible to be eloquent and illiterate at the same time. There's not guaranteed to be a correlation between the two. The key thing is how the words are pronounced moreso than how they are written. Modern English spelling came much later, and even then there are distinct differences between 'official' spellings of the same word in varieties of English (c.f. "jail" vs. "gaol") In the period just after the Norman invasion, there is likely to be a wide varience in spelling of the same word. --Jayron32 16:19, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sometimes it's because of etymologically influenced spelling in English. For example, debt started being spelled with a silent b to more closely resemble Latin debitum, but that didn't happen in French dette. (Though it did happen in French in other words, e.g. sept "seven", respelled with a silent p to more closely resemble Latin septem.) In other cases, English borrowed words directly from Latin rather than through the intermediary of French. If the same word entered French by linguistic inheritance rather than borrowing, it could be changed more heavily than the borrowed English word. For example, English potion is more like Latin potio than French poison, because the English word is borrowed directly from Latin, while the French word is inherited from Latin and so underwent all the usual sound changes. Pais (talk) 16:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes the spelling is influenced by the Anglo-Norman or initial Norman pronunciation, not the other forms of Old French that developed into Modern French. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

For a real hardcore adventure in English spelling, check out Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 20:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Finally, someone besides me uses the phrases "hardcore adventure" and "English spelling" in the same sentence! Lexicografía (talk) 22:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Linguistic porn? --Jayron32 14:02, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

"Subject - Verb - Object" - and exceptions

At school I leant that S - V - O is the correct sequence in English sentences. But as I observed 22:53, 10 December 2010, in some cases the grammatical subject follows the verb, especially when it is the verb “says” or “said”, like in this sentence: "And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room." (to be found it here). Now I have come across a different example. In his book Freedom evolves, Daniel C. Dennett wrote, describing an idea of somebody else: "Only if foresighted, purposeful agents have been manipulating you for their own ends are you absolved from personal responsibility for the actions undertaken by your body;" Why can it be are you instead of you are? Is there any regularity which might help me to see in which cases such a sequence is correct? -- Irene1949 (talk) 20:22, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

You're entirely correct. SVO is the most common (or dominant) and perhaps the basic sentence order in English, but there are many alternate structures that may come about due to structural transformations (e.g. SVO "You saw John?" can change to OSV "Who did you see?") or special focus structures or stylistic structures (e.g. "into the room came a man"). The whole idea of dividing languages up into "SVO languages", "SOV languages", etc., is not universally accepted by linguists. You can see our article on word order typology for more information. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I found that word order typology is an interesting article. Change of word order in questions is quite familiar to me, as my mother tongue is German. In English, it seems to be a little more difficult. You say "Who did you see", you don't say "Who saw you?" or "Whom saw you?" There are several reasons why this is easier in German. First thing, we'd never use the nominative pronoun "Wer" ("Who") instead of the accusative pronoun "Wen" ("Whom"). And then, Germans make much more use of inflection: for example "Du" (nominative for "you") is different from "Dich" (accusative for "you").-- 91.34.176.111 (talk) 23:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, we do say "Who saw you?" (to ask which person did see you). We don't say *"whom saw you", for reasons you hinted at; while English doesn't have a lot of case distinctions, one of the few we do have is who-whom (who is nominative, whom is accusative). rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

(If what you're hinting at with "whom saw you" is an OVS word order for questions, we can sometimes say that in fossilized phrases, such as "What say you?" rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. If I have got it right, then in the sentence “Who saw you?” it is a question about who saw, while in the sentence "Who did you see?" it is a question about who was seen. In this case, would it be just as correct to say “Whom did you see?” ? -- Irene1949 (talk) 01:12, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. "Whom did you see" is technically correct (and, in fact, "who did you see" is technically incorrect), but to people today it sounds over-formal, so most people say the latter. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. :-) -- Irene1949 (talk) 01:32, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

[W]hile English doesn't have a lot of case distinctions, one of the few we do have is who-whom (who is nominative, whom is accusative).

I'd just like to add that in English the Accusative and Dative declensions are one and the same. (Not only in who/whom, but in 'all pronouns) Pine (talk) 20:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

And getting back to the original question, I'd like to add that the constructions you quoted are often called inversions (the fact that there is a special name reflects the fact that they are not the norm). Verb before subject in declarative (non-question) sentences is only permitted in certain contexts. See this website for some good examples of where it can occur. Lesgles (talk) 08:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, that is an interesting website. In German, we have a word for "inversion" too–it is "Inversion" (in German, nouns are always written with capital letters). We have that special name although inversions are not at all rare in German.-- Irene1949 (talk) 01:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

German also has V2 word order, which makes things quite complicated for those who want to try and classify it as SOV or SVO or what have you. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

So maybe I am lucky that German is my mother tongue. So I need not learn why we say "Aber ich kaufte das Buch" ("But I bought the book") while we say "Trotzdem kaufte ich das Buch" ("Nevertheless I bought the book"). I just know that we say so, I need not know why. In a foreign language that is different. There I need information about the regularities. -- Irene1949 (talk) 17:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Romanization of Cyrillic

hello,

which transliteration system is the standard to romanize the Russian cyrillic alphabet; is it ISO 9? Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 23:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Standard according to who, and for which language? For Russian, you should check out this article. Bʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{Speak up!} 23:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

ISO 9 and GOST do seem to be the most up to date standards, with GOST being official for the Russian language in Russia and the CIS. Bʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{Speak up!} 07:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I know all cyrillic transliteration systems, so please, please don't link it here... Anyway, thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 10:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Skirting the issue, unwillingness to ask for something directly.

What's the term used to describe the behavior or characteristic of someone who asks for favors without actually asking for them. They just skirt and hint at the issue and hope or expect that eventually someone will OFFER the favor without them actually having to ask directly for it, as if others are obliged to them or it somehow absolves them of reciprocating the favor since they didn't actually ask for it. Not having any luck googling. Vespine (talk) 23:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Indirectness? rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Being circumspect? Angling / fishing? I guess the OP is asking for something with negative connotations, but the same behaviour will probably be viewed as either proper or suspect depending on the cultural context... --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"Passive-aggressive" might be best. 72.72.212.98 (talk) 00:50, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

duplicitous; conniving - in the sense of to plot & scheme; manipulative. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Passive-aggressive means a lot more than just what the OP is describing. And the words you list, Tagishsimon, are all rather insulting (more so, I think, than the behavior the OP described would warrant). rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi OP again. Passive aggressive sort of encapsulates it, I can certainly imagine a passive aggressive person engaging in this behavior but I thought there was a more specific term for it. Indirectness is how they achieve it, but lacks the motivational component of what I'm thinking of. I'll try to think of a good example of what i'm talking about, that might help. The words that came to my mind were obtuse and disingenuous but they also only very loosely fit. Circumspect sounds like it might be along the right track but the definition doesn't fit at all, maybe circumvent fits, but again only very loosely. Come to think of it Angling / fishing is actually probably the closest to being on the right track, but a more "formal" sounding word for it. Vespine (talk) 01:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't think of a "formal sounding word", but you may find the Politeness theory article relevant, particularly the brief Off-record (indirect) section, which suggests why a person might behave so. Deor (talk) 04:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

"Beating around the bush"? 82.124.101.35 (talk) 03:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Off-record (indirect) describes EXACTLY what i'm talking about. That's funny, I always considered it ruder to hint indirectly at something rather then asking for it. Ha.. Vespine (talk) 05:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

That's because the link you found is part of a politeness strategy. The scenario you described is the same essential behaviour, but carried out for reasons that have nothing to do with politeness. For that reason, I'm not convinced the link is the most appropriate one. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 08:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

yeah, sure, i didn't think of it that way... Beating about the bush fits too in a way but again, that can apply to just talking about any topic, not necessarily trying to weasel favors out of people. .. Vespine (talk) 13:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Tagishsimon suggested manipulative, and I think that's what Friedemann Schulz von Thun called this kind of implied command (or "appeal") in his four sides model of communication. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

@Jack: maybe that's why I've disagreed with all the other alternatives that were suggested: I don't see why the behavior the OP described is necessarily impolite. When people are calling it "manipulative" it sounds to me like people are ascribing motives to behavior without any direct evidence of those motives; as you have already implied, this kind of behavior is often a polite way of doing things (in fact, I do it a lot). rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree it certainly can be done as an expression of politeness. But sometimes, that's not the driving motivation at all - it's getting a result in a somewhat unclean, non-transparent, inauthentic manner. You avoid the risk of being refused, or of being required to provide a justification, when you ask for something. Such refusals can be unpleasant for both parties, and it's tempting to think that, by avoiding this confrontation, you're reliving your friend of this unpleasantness. How noble. But the truth may be that you're far more interested in relieving yourself of this unpleasantness than any thoughts of your friend's emotional welfare. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 14:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Pussyfoot (not the band) might also be the word you're looking for. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 15:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

OP again. The one strong example where I think it IS polite is the stereotypical: "friends stayed over too late" and the hosts start yawning and saying they have to go to work early the next day. In that specific case, I believe it would be more rude to directly ask your guest to leave now, BUT getting someone to leave is not really asking them to do you a big "favor". Also, a guest saying they are cold and me offering a jumper, that's fine too. What i'm talking about is when the favor is much more of an inconvenience to the person being asked and specifically if the hint is not "got" the 1st time, then in my opinion is it becomes rude. When it happens to me it makes me feel like: YOU'RE the one that wants the favor but you're trying to make ME ask you for it.. Yes it's pussyfooting and beating about the bush and all those but I thought there would be a more specific word for it. Seems like there might not be.. Vespine (talk) 01:08, 5 February 2011 (UTC)