#38979
08/20/2001 8:35 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 11,613 |
I know that there are many words from other languages that have become part everyday use in English. But I have not heard of some of these words--juger, for example. Also, I cannot explain the first N in BRETHREN.
Plurals … one the main banes of incorrect usage of the English Language. We thought we’d bring you some of the more odd or obscure plurals of words as an added bonus on today’s FlowGo “Word Flex”. Singular on the left, plural on the right… you don’t just add “s” to these words:
BROTHER NBRETHREN
DIE DICE
GOOSEFOOT GOOSEFOOTS
JUGER JUGERA
LANDSMAN LANDSLEIT
MGANGA WAGANGA
MONGOOSE MONGOOSES
NEVER-WAS NEVER-WERES
ORNIS ORNIS
PARIES PARIETIES
PENNY PENCE
PRUTAH or PRUTA PRUTOTH or PRUTOT
RUBAI RUBAIYAT
SHTETL SHTETLACH
ULCUS ULCERA
VILA VILY
WOMAN WOMEN
WUNDERKIND WUNDERKINDER
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#38980
08/20/2001 8:47 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 4,757 |
Nah - I think half exist only in the fevered imagination of some webwaster®! (typo for master, but I think I'll option it)
For the 'n' I have no explanation but this - the churches over here are so empty and lonely that the modern plainsong chant goes "is there n-e one there?"
As for penny, it's plain wrong - it can also take an s in the form of pennies.
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#38981
08/20/2001 9:40 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,409 |
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#38982
08/20/2001 10:50 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
...you don’t just add “s” to these words:
***
GOOSEFOOT GOOSEFOOTS
?
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#38983
08/20/2001 10:51 PM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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MONGOOSE -- (pl. MONGOOSES)
Samuel Goldwyn, needing a pair of this animal but unsure whether the plural was "mongooses" or "mongeese", wrote the following letter: "Please send a mongoose to the studio. As long as you're at it, send another one with it."
LANDSMAN (pl. LANDSLEIT)
Jackie, dear lady, it's so sweet to see you attempting Yiddish! However, I believe the plural of landsman is "landskeit". (I think there's more on this, but unfortunately my Joy of Yiddish was the first book our new puppy devoured.)
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#38984
08/20/2001 11:55 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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From the old quibbler: When "die" is a mechanical term, the plural is "dies".
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#38985
08/21/2001 12:29 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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BROTHER NBRETHREN
I would guess the initial N here is a typo
DIE DICE
Yes, valid for the gaming piece. The etymology appears to be fairly complex.
GOOSEFOOT GOOSEFOOTS
It's a plant and has nothing to do with feet per se, so why not?
JUGER JUGERA
Latin with a Latin plural.
LANDSMAN LANDSLEIT
Yiddish (as pointed out by Keiva) but cf. German Mann, man and Leute, people.
MGANGA WAGANGA
Looks like a Bantu grammar. M+root, singular, WA+root, plural
MONGOOSE MONGOOSES
Got nothing to do with geese. It's from Marathi or some such language. Standard English plural.
NEVER-WAS NEVER-WERES
Good ole nounification of a verb with pluralizationizing in both forms.
ORNIS ORNIS
Plain ole Latin once again.
PARIES PARIETIES
and again
PENNY PENCE
Pennies, pence both are correct.
PRUTAH or PRUTA PRUTOTH or PRUTOT
Looks Hebrew to me. Sounds good by me.
RUBAI RUBAIYAT
Now we talking Arabic or summat like that, I ain' gone argue wit nobody about this one.
SHTETL SHTETLACH
Yiddish again. I almost think we got something other than just plural here. Shtetlach sounds like maybe it means a collection of cities rather than just a straight plural.
ULCUS ULCERA
Latin again. I'd say fourth declension neuter.
VILA VILY
?????
WOMAN WOMEN
Oh, c'mon. You can't be having a problem with this.
WUNDERKIND WUNDERKINDER
Standard German plural for Kind. cf. Eng child, children.
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#38986
08/21/2001 12:35 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
First: Everything in the blue is a direct copy from Word Flex. Good points, all of you. My personal opinion is that this is an entertaining site, but not particularly well-researched. And they don't give a clue as to who writes it--that I can find, anyway.
Dr. Bill kindly sent me the following list that he found, as a comparison. I'll make that a straight copy, too, but will put the words side-by-side instead of one column--it would have made a very long post that way. Dr. B., are the names at the bottom those who compiled the list, do you know?
BROTHER BRETHREN
DIE DICE
ENGLYN E NGLYNION
FALAJ AFLAJ
GOOSEFOOT GOOSEFOOTS
JUGER JUGERA
KIBBUTZ KIBBUTZIM
LANDSMAN LANDSLEIT
MGANGA WAGANGA
MONGOOSE MONGOOSES
NEVER-WAS NEVER-WERES
ORNIS ORNITHES
PARIES PARIETIES
PENNY PENCE
PRUTAH or PRUTA PRUTOTH or PRUTOT
RUBAI RUBAIYAT
SHTETL SHTETLACH
ULCUS ULCERA
VILA VILY
WOMAN WOMEN
WUNDERKIND WUNDERKINDER
YAD YADAY IM
[Stuart Kidd, Philip Bennett]
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#38987
08/21/2001 2:04 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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rubaiyatDoes this mean that in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam one stanza is a rubai? And all these years I thought rubaiyat referred to the entire piece as an Arabian word for poem or song! 
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#38989
08/21/2001 2:34 AM
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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From Faldage: "PRUTAH or PRUTA, (pl. PRUTOTH or PRUTOT)
Looks Hebrew to me. Sounds good by me."
Yep. In Hebrew, the -OT ending (sometimes transliterated -OTH) is the standard pluralization for feminine nouns --- and a noun whose singular form ends with -A would typically be feminine.
(e.g., the book read from in the Passover Seder-service is a haggadah, pl. haggadot)
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#38990
08/21/2001 2:37 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I finally found a site that spells out that a "rubai" is four lines of verse, and the "rubaiyat" is the collection of these.
Khayyám has one main message to present to us. Perhaps it is best expressed in rubai twenty-four,
"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;"
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#38991
08/21/2001 3:40 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
rubai Thanks for the quick clarification on that, Dr. Bill!  Now...about those rubai red slippers!...
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#38992
08/21/2001 5:37 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,065 |
Omar Khayyam wrote in Farsi, not Arabic, though to be fair Farsi does use the Arabic alphabet.
Bingley
Bingley
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#38993
08/21/2001 4:09 PM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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> Omar Khayyam wrote in Farsi, not Arabic, though to be fair Farsi does use the Arabic alphabet.
Qubbile, quibble quibble! (Grin)
Remember, one man's Mede is another man's Persian.
Do I give the rugman enough credit?
TEd
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#38994
08/22/2001 9:12 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Posts: 393 |
englyn ~ englynion: A Welsh poem, I think. Similarly pennill ~ pennillion, but eisteddfod ~ eisteddfodau, geneth 'girl' ~ genethod. Welsh has a variety of plural endings with no real predictability, plus it uses umlaut (bachgen 'boy' ~ bechgyn) and some mixed plurals.
ruba`iyyah ~ ruba`iyyat. Arabic feminine weak plural. The feminine singular -ah (often pronounced & transcribed -a as in Fatimah or Fatima) becomes long stressed -at in the plural. Ruba`iyyah is from the root for 'four' ('arba`) and means 'quatrain' (< quatre). The -ah ending is usually feminine but in this case it has another miscellaneous noun-formative function; it still takes the plural -at. The plain or masculine it's attached to could be transcribed ruba`iyy or ruba`iy or ruba`i - the i is long and stressed, and the yy is to some extent a spelling convention of Arabic script. I'm not sure that you can go from masculine singular ruba`i(yy) to feminine plural ruba`iyyat: this looks like an error to me, but I don't know.
pruta(h) ~ prutot(h). The Hebrew equivalent of the Arabic feminine plural.
kibbutz ~ kibbutzim, so also cherub~im etc. Hebrew masculine plural. The Arabic equivalent (not in your list) is nominative -un, accusative and genitive -in, usually imported into English as -in, e.g. fellah 'peasant' ~ fellahin. From khams '5' comes khamsun, khamsin '50', and the wind is so named (I think) because it blows for fifty days.
falaj ~ aflaj. I don't know what this word means but it's an Arabic "broken" plural. Many (most) masculine words change to a different vowel pattern in the plural, rather than taking the -un/-in ending. There are numerous common patterns but it's pretty unpredictable which will be used. kitab 'book' ~ kutub; walad 'son' ~ 'awlad; su'al 'answer' ~ 'as'ilah; sometimes weak and broken plurals are both used, e.g. talib 'student' ~ talibun or tullab. (Borrowed into Persian as taleb, with Persian plural taleban.)
vila ~ vily is a Slavonic language, but I can't say which: Czech? Bulgarian? Alluring ghostly maidens, most familiar as the Wilis in Giselle, the ghosts of brides who were jilted before their wedding. Vily appear in the fourth Harry Potter book as cheerleaders for the Bulgarian quidditch team.
paries ~ parieties still looks like wrong Latin: shouldn't it be parietes?
mganga ~ waganga Swahili 'wizard, native doctor', I think. Names of persons go in the m- class in Swahili and take the plural wa-, e.g. also mtu 'person' ~ watu. Other Bantu languages use similar prefixes, often ba- for the plural, as in Bantu itself, 'people' = watu. One person from Lesotho is a Mosotho, a plurality of them are Basotho. Borrowings into English from any Bantu are very rare, so we don't see these plurals much. The curency of Swaziland is the lilangeni, plural emalangeni.
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#38995
08/22/2001 9:45 AM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,409 |
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#38996
08/22/2001 10:18 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 1,055
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 1,055 |
LANDSMAN LANDSLEIT
Yiddish but cf. German Mann, man and Leute, people.
This one would in fact, also be a fair transcription of the way Bavarians pronounce 'Landsleute'
MGANGA, WAGANGA
Is this pronounced with a soft G at the end? Does it have to do with the more modern/western use of the word, or does that come from the name of that river in India? Anyone?
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#38997
08/22/2001 1:08 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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JUGER JUGERA
Latin with a Latin plural.
But faldage, meaning what?
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#38998
08/22/2001 1:24 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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MGANGA, WAGANGA
Is this pronounced with a soft G at the end?
Nah. The onliest question is is it an <ng> sound as in sing, an <ngg> sound as in finger or an <n g> sound as in keen guy? Summer singing group I was in this summer did Samite's Ndere, ndere which contained three ngs. We used the first two pronunciations for the first two ngs and the third (which was in <ngi>) as ndzh
JUGER JUGERA
Latin with a Latin plural.
But faldage, meaning what?
Beats me. YCLIU.
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#38999
08/22/2001 1:37 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427 |
This is what I have found: The Roman measure of length used for land was the actus of 120 feet: the square actus was 14,400 square feet; and a juger or jugerum was two actus quadrati. The word centuria properly means a hundred of any thing. The reason of the term centuria being applied to these divisions may be, that the plebeian centuries contained 100 actus, which is 50 jugera, the amount contained in the portions put up to sale by the quaestors: but Siculus Flaccus (p.15, ed. Goes.) gives a different account. The centuria sometimes contained 200 jugera, and in later periods 240 and 400. This division into centuriae only comprehended the cultivable land.The article is by one George Long, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, and is found in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, ed. William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D. (London: John Murray, 1875), pp. 29-31. I have excerpted from the website http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/
ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Ager.htmlEdit-in: I've split the link in half to stop the screen going WIDE. I could see it just fine on my screen, but apparently not all monitors do the same. Sorry if anyone's been going crazy with it. [sorry, sorry e]
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#39000
08/22/2001 1:56 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
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In Swahili ng is /ngg/ as in finger. The g-less sound of singer is much less common, and is written ng', as in ng'ombe 'cow'.
Confusingly, in Francophone countries the initial syllables like nga-, nda-, mba- are often written with an apostrophe: N'djamena or N'Djamena. But this is quite misleading. The nasal is not a separate syllable. They're Ndja-me-na, Mbe-ki, Ndo-la, not N-dja-me-na, M-be-ki, N-do-la.
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#39001
08/22/2001 3:42 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Marianna: thanks for finding that explication of "juger (jugerum) jugera". I was simply unable to find a way of getting an anwer, and the relief of the frustration is very welcome.
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#39002
08/23/2001 4:22 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Marianna, I just get a page not found message for the link you gave.
Bingley
Bingley
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#39003
08/23/2001 8:02 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427
addict
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addict
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Posts: 427 |
Really, Bingley? I'm not sure why that would be. I just tried it, and it seems to be working fine for me. Did you manage to copy the whole two halves of the link into your Location box?
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#39004
08/23/2001 9:47 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,065 |
Got it now, thanks. I assumed that since the whole thing lit up when the cursor moved over it all I had to do was click. I've now managed it by cutting and pasting.
Bingley
Bingley
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