plurals of foreign words



I had a *huge* debate with one of my friends about this last night so
just thought I'd canvas some opinion.

We were discussing whether foreign words in English should take the
English plural (so basically add an "s") or keep their original plural
form. IIRC the initial discussion was about "stadium" - should it be
"stadium" or "stadia"? And if it's "stadia", then what about words
where it's more complicated - probably ones of Greek origin, like
phenomenon/phenomena etc. (Don't even get me started on datum/data!)
Then we went on to things like "spaghetti", which going by the ending
is a plural. My friend claims there isn't a singular of it in Italian.
(Then what do they call a single strand of spaghetti?) Would you use
spaghetti as a plural?

(Then he got really into the discussion and started wondering whether
we should use the foreign genitive too - not "the stadium's entrance"
but "stadii entrance". Or even worse, in the plural: "stadiorum
entrance".)

What do you guys say? Stadiums? Commas? (Commas is Standard English but
in German you can say either Kommas or Kommata.) Criterions? (I hope
not.) Any other comments?

Kat

.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: agenda, data ... spaghetti, graffiti
    ... about spaghetti, graffiti, zucchini, fettucine, salami etc. (plural in ... Singular in English, although you might on the odd occasion ... I believe the French often refer to "les spaghettis" and the like. ... When French people do adopt foreign words they ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Who castrated Esperanto?
    ... An example from English could be ... Btw, German also has the concept of "Lehnwörterbuch" (in Danish, the ... that there are genuinely unassimilated foreign words on the margins of ... borrowings becomes somewhat uninteresting. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Dawkins: new book coming out Sept. 22
    ... They dont speak english well enough to fit in with normal people. ... Your comments are over my tolerance limit, John. ... my age, were friends of mine, and were popular in school. ... a big fat prejudice against Southerners and couldn't stand a Southern ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: When is a word a word and not a foreign word?
    ... >> another language as an English word. ... >> pellagra, Inuit, Quechua...as foreign words or names that remain foreign ... If Fremdworter are "usually" of Latin or Greek origin, ... If Lehnworter are characterized by varying degrees of incorporation, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: When is a word a word and not a foreign word?
    ... > another language as an English word. ... > pellagra, Inuit, Quechua...as foreign words or names that remain foreign ... certain borrowings from certain ... as stability in orthography, assimilation to some orthographic, ...
    (sci.lang)

Loading