English constantly imports words from other languages, and over time these loan words can become thoroughly anglicised and may therefore be pluralised in the usual English ways: typically by adding -s or -es. Persona retains its Latin flavour and so the Latin plural personae survives, though some restrict it to literary and technical contexts. The anglicised plural personas is also frequently seen; indeed, both forms are on the rise.More at the link, via Sentence First.
The two spellings’ coexistence – some call it competition – is not unusual: witness appendixes and appendices, formulas and formulae, millenniums and millennia, referendums and referenda, stadiums and stadia, and thesauruses and thesauri, all used regularly...
There are no hard and fast rules about which plural to use and when. In certain cases the Latin is more formal or even affected, but not predictably so. Occasionally the two spellings differentiate in meaning. For example, stigmata normally implies a religious context, while stigmas is the general-purpose plural. Some authorities advise limiting mediums to spiritualists and using media for all other senses of the word, but usage varies.
09 August 2013
Latin plurals used in the English language
An excerpt from an article at Macmillan Dictionary:
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This raises the question of the correct pronunciation of the -i and -ae plural endings. The high school Latin I learned tells me they are pronounced "ee" and "eye" respectively, but everyone seems to pronounce "alumni" and "alumnae" backwards ("alumneye" and "alumnee" instead of the reverse). Then there's the amusing plural of Prius question, where some claim the answer is "Prii" -- pronounced "Pree-eye", which makes no sense at all. Be consistent and say "Preye-eye" or "Pree-ee", geez...
ReplyDeleteminor correction. stigma is greek, not latin.
ReplyDelete@rickterp, and then there is Caesar pronounced Seezer instead of Kaisar. Not to mention Julius instead of Iulius.
ReplyDeleteBut why would Kaisar be the correct pronunciation? No-one can say for sure how Latin was spoken in ancient Rome (by the commoners, no less). Moreover, most Romanic languages would pronounce Caesar with a soft 'c' not a hard 'k' sound.
DeleteThere is quite a lot of material that helps us reconstruct how Latin was pronounced. I can highly recommend reading through this elaborate reddit comment on the pronunciation of "Caesar".
DeleteI always assumed that it derives from latin that all romanic languages pronounce a hard 'k' before consonants and the vowels a, o and u soft 'c' before vowels e, i and the diphthongs ae and oe.
DeleteIt does, but that's a later development. In Latin's earlier stages, C was always pronounced K, regardless of the following vowel.
DeleteOn a related note: English speakers seem more and more to lose the singular/plural distinction in words like phenomenon/-a; automaton/-a, etc. And then of course there's the whole category of words that were borrowed in their plural form but reinterpreted as singulars, such as zucchini.
ReplyDelete@ drabkikker- zucchini ALWAYS occurs as plural, especially this time of year...
ReplyDelete