Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> writes: > Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com>: > >> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 12:59 PM, Steven D'Aprano >> <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >>> And there are underspecified rules too. What is the plural of octopus? No >>> fair looking it up in the dictionary. >> >> Standard and well-known piece of trivia, and there are several >> options. "Octopodes" is one of the most rigorously formal, but >> "octopuses" is perfectly acceptable. "Octopi" is technically >> incorrect, as the -us ending does not derive from the Latin. > > Your brain's grammar engine will give you the correct answer. It may not > match your English teacher's answer, but the language we are talking > about is not standard English but the dialect you have acquired in > childhood.
Aha - the Humpty Dumpty approach to English usage: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean..." -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
