Off-topic: Latin Plurals

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

I LOVE Xeroces! and I have seen "Linices" (for different flavors and
distros of Linux). But the reason for commending Latin as an aid to
English is not just--or even chiefly--as a grounding in clear thinking
(logic would be better for that, as the "benighted" medievals understood
and implemented in the trivium). No, the point is that Latin and English
are both Indo-European languages, of the Western branch. And ALL the
Indo-European languages have a great deal of grammar in common. That
verbs should agree with their subjects in person and number (and gender
in some forms, such as perfect tenses and passives) is not a stricture
peculiar to English; you find it in Latin, Greek, French, Russian,
German, Gaelic, and no doubt Armenian. But in Latin, one can see the
workings of the rules as one cannot in English, whose inflections have
been worn down over the centuries. (German and Russian also manifest
Indo-European grammar more clearly, but both have other disadvantages,
and neither is as thorough a manifestation as Latin.)
	I like to tell my classes (when I teach English grammar for writers and
editors) that Latin and Greek are like Chartres Cathedral and the
Parthenon, English like the Seagram building: the same principles of
engineering construction are present in all three, but you can SEE them
working in the first two.
	There is also the matter of vocabulary: with the possible exception of
chemistry (whose terms of art draw heavily on Arabic roots), most of the
words in learned use in the arts and sciences come from Latin (or Greek).
Patricia