to wince every time I see "fora"?

[Mardymwahhaha]

The word forum has become naturalised as an English word surely? Can't people just say forums and stop showing off that they know using the Latin.

Yes thank you for being a good person and not drawing attention to my mistakes....

Fishes is an old and acceptable alternative.

Food for fishes only fitted
Jester wishes he was dead - W S Gilbert, The Yeomen of the Guard.

Hi , can I just add that in Orkney kai is the plural of cow !!

As in "look at them daft kai over there." Wrong in sooooooo many ways.

though sometimes it is written kye....

I quite like kye for cows.

I say fishes sometimes. I think it's fine. Well, in my head it is.

I also admire the American English 'dove' for past-tense 'dive'. I find it much more intuitive than 'dived'.

I'd like to know when the plural of words like roof and dwarf stopped needing the -ves at the end - so often I see roofs and dwarfs (noun plural, not verb), instead of rooves and dwarves. Knives is more normal though.

dwarf has never been dwarves except for in the Lord of the Rings...

roof has not been rooves for the past 100 years eaither.

I like my hubby's extra English add ons - he has freshly "squozen" orange juice in the morning.

Squozen is awesome.

My DH calls saucepans 'saucebins'. He is not English. I only have my own dreadful accent to blame.

if you are going to say 'fora' then what about changing it for genetive,dative and ablative then.
what do this fori posters think of that??

Psammead - my hubby IS English and chooses squozen!!

freeze, frozen,
squeeze, squozen lol

Good point spiderpig. Let's see how many of these "fora" users really know their Latin.

I say and write rooves and dwarves...

like hooves...

Ah, the quirks of English -
hoof, hooves
roof, roofs
proof, proofs
belief, beliefs
chef, chefs
knife, knives and scarf,shelf,leaf,loaf,life and a hundred others

and definitely - til Tolkein (first ever instance of dwarves is in Lord of the Rings) - dwarf, dwarfs but hey-ho elf, elves was already in use.

dwarves is in Snow White and the seven dwarves, not dwarfs. Snow White precedes Tolkien, surely?

I was taught roof --> rooves at school, and old though I am, I'm not over 100! [hshock]

proof - proofs - well, there's a verb ishoo going on there, same with belief - beliefs - could get confusing if you use the -ves ending, would suggest the verb.

chef is French and therefore doesn't count 7

[hgrin]

I was also taught 'rooves' at school. Also not 100 years ago.

I like "proven". Just saying.

prooven or proeven? just asking :)

Thzumbazombiewitch - Snow White was Dwarfs I'm afraid.... even on the Disney site...

Tolkein made up dwarves as a linguistic joke - if elf - elves then dwarf - dwarves etc....

Pedantry rules, I have to look up these things:
Tolkien didn't "invent" the plural, he just used an older form, but not the most archaic available to him (dwarrows)

oh -that's ok - I love pedantry!!

My eldest came home from school saying her teacher said she was wrong for calling a seven sided figure a heptagon - it was, he said, a "septagon". She did her research, printed out loads of facts about septagon being a lazy modern construct using a mix of Latin and Greek, and that although it is accepted, heptagon is "more" correct - and gained an apology! She comes from a long line of pedants!! (on my side!)

a septagon????!?!!! OMG. Good for your DD sorting him out on that one! "septagon", my behind. I like her. I like pedants. I like you too. :)

she is 10 and I was so proud of her for sticking to her guns !