On Monday, February 2, 2015 at 9:40:35 PM UTC+5:30, Mark Lawrence wrote: > On 02/02/2015 08:52, Marko Rauhamaa wrote: > > Chris Angelico : > > > >> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 12:59 PM, Steven D'Aprano 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. > > > > > > Marko > > > > I'd love to see a formal definition for "standard English". >
I'd also love to see a formal definition of 'formal' Elsewhere someone (Marko I think) used the term 'rigorous' Ive heard it said that formal is more rigorous than 'rigorous'. And of course the other way round as well ;-) -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
