Is the plural of forum - 'Fora' ?

[shirleyowl]

The subject says it all.


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[sleipnir214]

I depends on which language's pluralization rules you use.

The word forum comes to English from Latin. If you use the Latin pluralization rule, the plural is fora (see

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/f/f0241700.html).

But forum is now an English word, so you can use the English pluralization rule, which makes the plural of forum, forums (see

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/f/f0274400.html).

My personal preference is fora.


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[shirleyowl]

Ah yes I see, so if we take it that originally forum is a latin word the Fora is correct. Now I was once castigated for using Rooves, in my infant classroom.... instead of Roofs, because I used Dwarf as my pattern, which becomes dwarves........
any advice on this one. Maybe that school inspector will be made to eat her words.
kind thoughts



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[sleipnir214]

Yourdictionary.com gives both dwarfs and dwarves as possible plurals of dwarf.

The "ves" plural for dwarf seems to have been popularized by J. R. R. Tolkien. I have a copy of The Annotated Hobbit. The story's introduction reads, in part:

In English, the only correct plural for dwarf is dwarfs, and the adjective is dwarfish. In this story, dwarves and dwarvish are used, but only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged.

.

There is an annotation for the above text, which quotes a letter Professor Tolkien wrote to Stanley Unwin:

No reviewer (that I have seen), although all have carefully used the correct dwarfs themselves, has commented on the fact (which I only became conscious of through reviews) that I use throughout the "incorrect" plural dwarves. I am afraid it is just a private piece of bad grammar, rather shocking in a philologist...The real "historical" plural of dwarf (like teeth of tooth) is dwarrows, anyway: rather a nice word, but a bit too archaic. Still, I rather wish I had used the word dwarrow

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[shirleyowl]

OK I do seem to stand cprrected on this one. Though I had never read the Hobbit until much later than the incident.So I wonder from where I learnt it?
Ho HUM!
Of Course the vagaries of the English language are what makes it so rich.

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[sleipnir214]

An article at YourDictionary.com, titled "How Many Words are in English?" reads in part

It is true that English borrows recklessly from virtually every language on earth. In fact, "borrow" may be too weak in speaking of English; we should say that English aggressively mugs other languages for their lexical treasure

This can make the construction of plurals interesting.

Take octopus, which is pluralized in English as either octopi (in deference to the fact the word entered English from New Latin) or octopuses (using the English-standard pluralization rule).

However, octopus is actually a New Latin import word from Greek. The word is constructed of a pair of Greek words, okto (eight) plus pous (foot). And pous in Greek takes the plural poda. So if you use the "origin language" pluralization rule, the plural of octopus should be octopoda. Which in a way it is -- the Order which contains all octopods and devilfish is called "Octopoda".



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[ESquared]

Some other plurals/singulars that might be of interest

plural singular (variant/note)

dice die
opera opus (singular now opera)
biscotti biscotto
matrices matrix (matrixes)
data datum
media medium (mediums)
vertices vertex (vertexes)

crises crisis
fungi fungus (funguses)
genera genus (genuses)
larvae larva
phyla phylum (not phylums)
bacteria bacterium
seraphim seraph
cherubim cherub
djinni djinn

First seven from my head, last nine stolen from The Straight Dope.


P.S. If the singular of biscotti is biscotto, what is the singular of Panini?

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A sacrifice is harder when no one knows you've made it.

 

[Dimandja]

Panino, of course.

 

[ESquared]

Panini as in capital P!

Panini Indian grammarian. His Ashtadhyayi, one of the first works of descriptive linguistics, presents grammatical rules for Sanskrit.

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A sacrifice is harder when no one knows you've made it.

 

[GwydionM]

As Gollum might have put it:

Lord Of The Ringsises, at cinimae near you!

A word naturalised in English normally uses the standard English plural.

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A view from the UK

 

[sleipnir214]

I don't think you'd use "cinemae" as the plural of "cinema".

"cinema" comes from Greek, not Latin, so the "a" to "ae" rule probably does not apply. One possible Greek pluralization rule would be to change the terminal "a" to "ata", thus "cinemata", but I'm not sure if this is the correct Greek rule to apply.



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