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On the NPR news (supposedly high-class) this morning I heard, not for the first time, a reporter making an egregious mess of a word which has a Latin plural. Since there have been a number of questions and discussions of Latin recently, I thought it might be helpful to go over the rules for plurals in Latin, many of which have carried over into English, although we are in process of discarding the Latin plurals in favor of English plurals.
Latin nouns are to be found in 5 "declensions". A declension is a system for modifying, mostly by terminations, nouns to show their grammatical status or function. The declensions are classed by the nominative singular form of the nouns it contains. The 1st declension has the nouns ending in -a for all genders, such as agricola, poeta. Nouns in the 2nd declension end in -us if masculine, -a if feminine, and -um if neuter; e.g., discipulus (short 'u'), puella, bellum. 3rd declension nouns take a variety of endings. 4th declension nouns end in -es (long 'e'), such as quies; 5th declension nouns end in -us (long 'u'), such as latus.
For the record, the plural in the 1st decl. is -ae, so it's one agricola, two agricolae. In the 4th and 5th, the nominative plural is the same as the singular. As it happens, most of the nouns which have come into English are 2nd declension, with a few from the 3rd.
In the 2nd decl., the plural of -us is 'i' (long 'i'); the plural of -a is 'ae', the plural of -um is 'a' (short 'a'). So, to take examples of words brought into English, you have one alumnus (masculine) but two alumni, one alumna (feminine) but two alumnae, one stadium, two stadia, one condominium, two condominia, to be correct, although I doubt there are many people who would use stadia over stadiums. In the 3rd declension, the nom. plural is -es (long 'e'), but it isn't added to the nominative singular; in the 3rd declension, the root form of the word is found in the genitive singular, so you have to know both the nominative and genitive singular forms to know how to form the plural. The singular vir gen. viris takes the plural vires. Homo (hominis) = homines. Doctor (doctoris) = doctores; auctor = auctores.
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Are ll's pronounced the same as in Spanish?
jimthedog
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Are ll's pronounced the same as in Spanish?Good question, jimthedog. i've been searching for a good Latin pronunciation guide, preferably online. Anyone have a link?? The wee bit of latin that i've learned is useless to me, because i'd never dare quote anything in enlightened company. i probably pronounce "mea culpa" wrong, even, though i do often say it.  ..nothing like boldly displaying your lack of a good education, huh?
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Carpal Tunnel
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The ll in Spanish is representative of a sound that did not appear in Classical Latin. I dunno bout no on line guides, I speck it's highly googlable, but there's a good book that'll teach you stuff you never learned in school about Latin pronunciation. It's call Vox Latina and it asks (and answers) the burning questions, how the bleep do we know and who the bleep gives a hairy rat's bleep?
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Faldage points out: The ll in Spanish is representative of a sound that did not appear in Classical LatinI was taught Latin in Spain, and we invariably pronounced ll as plain /l/ and g as /g/, although in words like angelus Spanish would want it to be /x/. Everything else we simply pronounced ŕ l'espagnole, although there was always a debate as to whether c's in words like circum (I am referring to the first c) should be /k/ or the th sound in "thin" (no Greek symbols here). I don't think we ever got an explanation of why we pronounced it -or should pronounce it- that way.  Marianna
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To BYB -- Very nicely done, indeed, Magister! (As usual) I do not recall ever seeing such a useful, complete and yet succinct summary of the rules for plurals in all 5 declensions. You could have helped a lot when I was in the 9th grade taking 1st year Latin. Where were you when I needed you? Oh, yeah, now I remember. You were in the 6th grade, young fellow. I hope - but very much doubt - if the NPR types are paying attention to your study aid. As for me, I'm copying it and putting it in a (paper!) Latin dictionary. P.S. But, please, Teach, don't check on me too closely in future. I may forget to look at it!!
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I would also highly recommend Vox Latina if you're serious about the details of correct Latin pronunciation.
Historically, since Latin has been continuously spoken for over 2000 years, by significant groups of people in many countries, it's developed a wide range of pronunciations local to that place and time (e.g. modern church Latin is pronounced as if Italian). None of these should be used as a model for the true classical pronunciation.
Extremely quickly: C as in cat, G as in get, S as in sit (all three without exception), V as in wet, AE as in aisle, OE as in boil, H and QU as in English, R rolled, vowels as in Italian/Spanish will do for now. Final M was not a consonant but indicated a long nasal vowel.
The groups CH PH TH (usually from Greek) were the same as C P T. If you see a written J (it's more usually I in modern print of Latin) it's as in yet or Ja.
Double consonants pronounced double.
The group GN was probably as in hangnail.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Good précis, Nicholas.
Answers to the questions:
how the bleep do we know?
Misspellings in graffiti, rantings from the Grammar police and the like.
who the bleep gives a hairy rat's bleep?
Anyone at all interested in knowing what the poetry (essentially an aural art) sounded like.
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re: Latin Proununciation: V as in wet
giving rise to the old joke about Caesar dividing the Britons into 3 parts; the Weeny, the Weedy and the Weaky. (Veni, Vedi, Veci) We were taught V as in Vow at school by a guy who was old enough to have been around at the time and only later learnt that the "W" sound was "correct", and could make sense of the joke.
On plurals of Latin words in English, the majority UK usage is the English form, though some Latin forms such as stadia, fora, compendia (and of course flora and fauna) can be found, and die hards such as myself use them from preference. There must be several others but I can't think of them right now.
Rod
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Carpal Tunnel
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Rod mentions plurals of Latin words in English
Then there are the ones we don't even remember are plurals, e.g., data, agenda and opera, not to mention the ever popular media.
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