Re: OT: Status, Portable

[cld@xxxxxxxx (Carl Distefano)]

Reply to note from Harry Binswanger  Sun, 23 Jun
2002 22:03:06 -0400

Harry, Harry, Harry, I knew I'd get a rise out of you.

> Not only is "genuses" (Greek, not Latin) incorrect, ...

The Random House Unabridged Dictionary, for one, recognizes it
(though puts it second).

> ... it feels clumsy on the tongue (or my tongue anyway).

It all boils down to what you're used to. What's the plural of
Venus? Clumsy on the tongue?

Hey, when it comes to language, I'm a preservationist, a "data are"
kind of guy. If taxonomists and logicians say "genera", I'd be the
last to contradict. The reality, however, is that when a foreign
word becomes assimilated semantically, it tends to become
assimilated morphologically as well. (Genus may be a special case,
because it's a specialist word.) Ask the geniuses at Stanford who
study these, um, phenomenons.... Actually, "genius" is an
interesting case. RHUD specifies "geniuses" for three meanings,
"genii" for three others, and none for yet another three (where the
plural doesn't apply).

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/