Re: Talking Pictures TV

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <Eqadne1ZUKlTbUPH...@brightview.co.uk>, NY
<m...@privacy.net> writes:
>"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JP...@255soft.uk> wrote in message
>news:8tQRF7uh...@255soft.uk...
>> In message
>><1nnqeyx.1lcxraj16lax7qN%adr...@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid>, Adrian
>>Tuddenham <adr...@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>J. P. Gilliver (John) <G6JP...@255soft.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I remember seeing an interview with the bloke who made the film
>>>> "Sebastiane" (the only film, AFAIK, ever made in Latin - it was then,
>>>> anyway) where he cheerfully admitted that, when showing the film to the
>>>> censors, they deliberately used a frame/gate/whatever in the projector
>>>> such that the censors did not see the penises that the film contained.
>>>
>>>The plural of penis is penes.
>>>
>> In Latin, yes. In English, the jury is out.
>
>The beauty of English is that it can import foreign words and make
>plurals according to English laws. I have yet to meet anyone (except a
>Greek scholar) who says that the plural of octopus is octopodes. (I
>realise that it's not octopi, which is based on the mistaken belief
>that it's a Latin word.)

I tend to use the Latin plurals where I remember, but mainly for second
declension words. (And "data" has changed meaning, and is often now
treated as a singular - "the data is".) For third and higher declension,
and Greek, ones, I find the alienness jars sufficiently to break my
train of thought such that I lose the thread of what the speaker is
talking about.

Mind you, if someone "corrects" me (or someone else) with at least a
second declension plural, I look carefully at where the word they are
referring to is in the sentence, and if appropriate, point out that they
really should be speaking of bacteriorum, or rerumpubmicarum!
>
>Also, fashions change: the possessive of a person's name that ends in S
>used to be (for example) "James' book", "Mr Jones' house". But in
>speech and even in writing, this is often "James's book", "Mr Jones's
>house" nowadays.

Indeed. I always found the older form illogical. Though I can think of
one exception: the home ground of Newcastle United FC (though officially
now called something like the SportsDirect Stadium but *nobody* calls it
that) is St. James' Park, and local pronunciation is somewhere _in
between_ James' and James's. But on the whole I add - in speech - an
extra syllable to the possessive form of a noun (proper or otherwise)
that ends in s, and feel happier writing it as ...s's too.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

User Error: Replace user, hit any key to continue.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <pbn51n$9fh$1...@dont-email.me>, MB <M...@nospam.net> writes:

>On 24/04/2018 09:53, NY wrote:
>> The beauty of English is that it can import foreign words and make
>>plurals according to English laws. I have yet to meet anyone (except a
>>Greek scholar) who says that the plural of octopus is octopodes. (I
>>realise that it's not octopi, which is based on the mistaken belief
>>that it's a Latin word.)

>> Also, fashions change: the possessive of a person's name that ends
>>in S used to be (for example) "James' book", "Mr Jones' house". But
>>in speech and even in writing, this is often "James's book", "Mr
>>Jones's house" nowadays.
>

>It is the old argument, is English the language spoken by the majority
>of the people in England (and the rest of the UK) or what is spoken by
>a handful of pedantic academics?
>
Not just the UK, of course.

[NY]

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JP...@255soft.uk> wrote in message

news:2z0zCC9x...@255soft.uk...

> I tend to use the Latin plurals where I remember, but mainly for second
> declension words. (And "data" has changed meaning, and is often now
> treated as a singular - "the data is".) For third and higher declension,
> and Greek, ones, I find the alienness jars sufficiently to break my train
> of thought such that I lose the thread of what the speaker is talking
> about.

Blimey, now we're getting technical, talking about declensions. From the
days when I struggled with O level Latin, I vaguely remember declensions
being mentioned, but I'm blowed if I can remember what they are. Wikipedia
says that it's category of words which all change their endings in a common
way - I suppose that's roughly equivalent to regular/irregular verbs and (in
German) strong/weak verbs. (*)

I found Latin almost impossible, mainly because when I was faced with a
Latin sentence, I couldn't identify which words were nouns or verbs, or
remember all the different word-endings that signified what in English we'd
delegate to separate auxiliary words: articles (the, a), conjunctions (and)
and prepositions (to, from). I think sub-consciously I must use articles and
prepositions, and a more rigid word-order, as clues for identifying parts of
speech in a sentence: in English, French and German sentences *tend* to be
constructed in the order: article adjective subject verb preposition
adjective object (with adjectives after the noun in French), and you tend to
say to yourself "here's a 'the', so what follows will either be an adjective
or a noun, and that will be the subject, then there will be a verb and then
another noun which will be the object". German gives big unsubtle clues in
that nouns always start with capital letters (even in the middle of a
sentence). OK there's the extra complication of the verb shooting to the end
of the sentence in a subordinate clause or when it's a past participle, but
that becomes fairly easy after a while.

We are very lucky in English that we do not require adjectival agreement or
have multiple genders. In a redundant language like French or German, where
there are both auxiliary words and word endings, the meaning can usually be
inferred even if the word endings or gender are wrong (**), but in a sparse
language like Latin, you can change the whole meaning if you get the ending
wrong, because there are few auxiliary words that also convey the meaning.


(*) At the second school where I learned Latin, it was common to refer to
"A-form", "B-form", "C-form" etc to refer to subject, object, genitive,
ablative, and dative forms (though not necessarily in that order), because
it was thought that "genitive" and "ablative" were too technical. Far
better, if those words are too obscure, to call them by the preposition: the
"of form" and the "to form".

(**) A French person told me that getting the gender wrong is regarded as no
worse a solecism than dropping an H or referring to "two mans" instead of
"two men" - clearly wrong according to the rules of the language but equally
clear what the speaker meant, and so a fairly venial sin, that makes you
smile at someone's "illiteracy" rather than struggle to understand his
meaning.

[Mike Fleming]

In article <2z0zCC9x...@255soft.uk>, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"

One can find a useful tip here:
https://www.dailywritingtips.com/possessive-of-proper-names-ending-in-s/

"When it comes to forming the possessive of a proper name that ends in
s, guides disagree.

"Some stylebooks recommend a single apostrophe for Biblical or
classical names like Jesus and Achilles, but 's for names like James
and Charles; others say, 'Treat all names ending in s the same.'"

I'm not much of a Bible scholar, to say the least, but I think James
would be entitled to feel a little miffed about being denied his
biblicality.

--
Mike Fleming