Nobody AFAIK ever claimed “viruses” (or even “pizzas”) was not English—not people who study them, not any English dictionary, nor I.
The only fast rule is, as has been said, if you are going to pepper your prose with gratuitous foreign phrases, be sure to get it right. (And as far as medicine goes, imo one should be as clear as possible to avoid potential catastrophic screw-ups, though Latin still seems to be used to some extent in medical prescriptions.)
Back when I was in college, my fellow students thought they were so clever in realizing that the plural of syllabus could be syllabi and they used it constantly, mostly in the singular, as in “Don’t forget to take a syllabi.” Idiots.
And why not decline it: if you are taking something, it would be a syllabum…
Sometimes the meaning is clearer (NOT more clear) with a strategically-placed apostrophe.
I’m the king of commas and semicolons, but even I think there are limits.
As a Chicago-ishian, you might be able to blame the Tribune’s Col McCormick for [del]aberrant[/del] simplified spellings like thru. https://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-per-flash-simplespelling-0229-20120129-story.html
I was looking for the singular, but I guess either way works for that post. Interesting stuff!
Commas have become a huge problem. I constantly see this kind of thing –
“The dog kept his bone in, the doghouse.”
Perhaps not this blatant, but I seem to be seeing it more and more, this inappropriate comma before the object of a verb or a preposition.
Are people who pepper their prose pepperazzi? How about those who prep their poes?
Same with “zucchini”. If you have just one baby marrow or courgette, no one calls it a “zucchino” in English.
And then there’s the opposite phenomenon: the imported singular form “mongoose” sadly does not take the plural “mongeese”.
Most people I know do say paparazzo/a, and graffito.
The one that gets me is “barista.” I have no problem with “baristas.” But should men with this job really be a “barista” with an -a? Or is this just the nature of loan words?
In Italian, barista can be either masculine or feminine. The singular is the same for both, but the plural is baristi or bariste according to gender.
And “panini.” It kind of irks me that a word that just means “sandwiches” has this more particular meaning. Same with “chai.” It just means “tea,” nothing more than that.
Regarding “panini,” it somewhat annoys me that a word that simply means “sandwiches” ends up in a phrase like “sandwiches and paninis,” as if they’re too different things. It’s like “chai.” It just means “tea,” nothing more specific than that.
On the other hand… Italians use the English word ‘toast’ to mean a toasted sandwich. :D
And when a Frenchman refers to ‘des baskets’, he means sneakers (US) or trainers (UK).
A few more here.
And here’s A quick guide to speaking Franglais
I dare say speakers of many other languages misuse English words more than English speakers misuse words in their languages.
Koreans use the English word “toast” (토스트/to-seu-teo) to mean “grilled cheese sandwich”. They’ve upped the game on that though, as you can see on one outfit’s menu here.
Koreans also use the English word “white shirt” (화이트 셔츠/hwa-i-teu shye-cheu) to mean “dress shirt”, regardless of color or pattern of the shirt.
Damn. Now I want a Deep Cheese Bacon Potato Toast on White Bread.
If you really want this thread to be effective, probably should have included “Viruses” in either the subject or first sentence. Write like an educator and not a magazine writer. You kind of buried the correct pluralization.
A list of Japanese loan words from various languages. Most of them altered out of all recognition in both form and meaning. :eek:
I kid Mrs. FtG from time to time when she says “chai tea”. So “tea tea” then?
Yeah, why not call it “masala tea”? Or “spiced tea”? Or “Indian spiced tea”? “Chai tea” is just dumb.
But I am amused when my brother asks for a “tai chi latte.”