Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
A paper dealing with this question, giving as full a list as possible of the words that are at present in a precarious condition, and proposing in each case the curative spelling, is invited; and any single practical contribution to the subject will be welcome. A full list of foreign nouns that are uncertain of their Englished plurals is required.
It is rich, beyond all comparison, in inflexions; and the difficulty arises from the extreme multiplicity of all its forms: e.g. each verb having not only active, middle, and passive voices, but the primitive active having not less than thirty-five derivative forms and the passive thirteen. Again, there are twenty-eight sets of irregular plurals, which are quite arbitrary.
Some substantives are what the grammarians call aggregate plurals, "which are not used in the plural without the addition of diminutive terminations, for example adar, birds, aderyn, a bird; gwenyn, bees, gwenynen, a single bee." There are different kinds of adjectives; some have a plural, some have none; some have a feminine form, others have not; the most common plural termination is ion.
It will not be easy to persuade the literate, the men of culture, to renounce the x at the end of beaux and bureaux and to spell these plurals 'beaus' and 'bureaus'. And yet no one doubts that 'beau' and 'bureau' have both won the right to be regarded as having attained an honourable standing in our language.
Among other derivatives I have been careful to insert and elucidate the anomalous plurals of nouns and preterites of verbs, which in the Teutonick dialects are very frequent, and though familiar to those who have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners of our language.
Lady Maresfield had been prepared for the plural number, and she was a woman whom it took many plurals to disconcert. "I'm sure Guy is longing for another dance with you," she rejoined, with the most unblinking irrelevance. "I'm afraid we're not dancing again quite yet," said Rose, glancing at her mother's exposed shoulders, but speaking as if they were muffled in crape.
However, for the benefit of those who may be interested in such things I may say that the plurals are formed simply for all words in the Pal-ul-don language by doubling the initial letter of the word, as k'kor, gorges, pronounced as though written kakor, the a having the sound of a in sofa. Lions, d' don. The Tor-o-don
But not all infinitives are formed according to the type of shmor and gnob or of other types of internal vowel change. Certain verbs suffix a t-element for the infinitive, e.g., ten-eth "to give," heyo-th "to be." In Nass, an Indian language of British Columbia, plurals are formed by four distinct methods.
"Hydrae. Be careful about your Latin plurals. But look here, do you want me to box your ears?" "No, uncle." "Then don't give me any more of your impertinent allusions. Hum hum hum! Half-past six. Very early for breakfast. But I begin to feel a little appetitlich, as the Germans call it; don't you?" "Oh no, uncle," said Rodd, very mildly.
In polysyllabic words in which there are no long vowels, all the vowels are intermediate. Vowels are "with stress" when they are the finals in the plurals of nouns and verbs, also in the perfect preterite, in possessives ending in â, ê, ô, and in the penultimate of nouns ending in tli, tla and tle when these syllables are immediately preceded by the vowel.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking