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little English and less Latin

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January 28, 2007, 17:55
zmježd
little English and less Latin
What's the deal with people inventing bogus Latin and Greek plural endings for nouns? I'd thought I'd seen it all: octopi (octopodes), virii (viruses, there is no plural of virus in Latin), opii (opera), ignorami (ignoramuses, this is no Latin noun, it's a first person plural verb), etc., but now I've run across penii as the pseudo-Latinate plural of penis, which in Latin would be penes in the nominative plural. Why, if they can't bother to learn Latin (and Greek) grammar, do the semi-literate incorrectly decline nouns? (Actually one of those ghits supra has cactii for cacti or cactuses.) Maybe it's all just ironii.

Sic semper ingrammaticis!


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
January 29, 2007, 08:25
arnie
<sentitiously>A little learning is a dangerous thing</sentitiously>


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.