On Wednesday 28 Jul 2004 10:38, Andrzej Kukula wrote: > Neither Miriam-Webster nor Cambridge list plural form of 'virus'. But > there's simple rule to make plurals in English: append 's' to a noun, and if > the noun ends in 's', then append 'es'. Or I'm missing something.
I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this seriously OT subject, but I need to point out that adding 's' / 'es' doesn't always work, especially for words derived directly from Latin/Greek. Often even natives get it wrong, saying "stadia" instead of "stadiums", however it is true that the plural of "datum" is "data" [ OT number 2 a lot of IT people miss this point and thing that the word data is singular ]. The good one is agenda/agendum/agendas. All 3 words are legal English but often get confused. Agenda = one list of many items to discuss in a meeting; agendum = one list of one item to discuss in a meeting; agendas = more than one list of one of more items to discuss in a meeting. For the same reason, the plural of referendum is referendums, not referenda, since the number of questions on most referendums is 1 (unless you're American - not sure about Switzerland). The main thing about English as a language is that as soon as you cite a rule someone will quote a word that breaks it (what's the plural of person?). To make it worse some words are the same in singular as in plural. > Regards, > Andrzej Kukula -Nigel (BTW there are probably some mistakes - I failed English 'O' level after all!) -- Nigel Horne. Arranger, Composer, Typesetter. NJH Music, Barnsley, UK. ICQ#20252325 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.bandsman.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by BEA Weblogic Workshop FREE Java Enterprise J2EE developer tools! Get your free copy of BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 today. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=4721&alloc_id=10040&op=click _______________________________________________ Clamav-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/clamav-users
