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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
"colossus" comes from the greek "kolossos" making it a second declension masculine noun. in english, second declension nouns ending in -us take -i, meaning the correct pluralization of "colossus" is "colossi" and not "colossuses" not all -us ending words take this rule, as something like "walrus" comes from dutch making "walrii" incorrect and "walruses" correct get it right, casters    | ||
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Megalisk
United States6095 Posts
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
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GogoKodo
Canada1785 Posts
Blizzard uses colossi, so I guess that's what it "officially" is. http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=14697620469&pageNo=1&sid=3000#13 | ||
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deth
Australia1757 Posts
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H
New Zealand6138 Posts
On April 24 2010 17:20 Megalisk wrote: Its Colloxon FYI Colloxen imo | ||
Carnac
Germany / USA16648 Posts
On April 24 2010 17:18 benjammin wrote: i'm pretty sure everything i am about to say is correct, but if there are any linguists here who can correct me feel free "colossus" comes from the greek "kolossos" making it a second declension masculine noun. in english, second declension nouns ending in -us take -i, meaning the correct pluralization of "colossus" is "colossi" and not "colossuses" not all -us ending words take this rule, as something like "walrus" comes from dutch making "walrii" incorrect and "walruses" correct get it right, casters well I doesnt really matter where a word comes from, imagine if we were to use the grammar of the language of origin for all lean words :o | ||
Arbiter[frolix]
United Kingdom2674 Posts
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gngfn
United States1726 Posts
in english, second declension nouns ending in -us take -i, meaning the correct pluralization of "colossus" is "colossi" and not "colossuses" This part doesn't even make sense. There are no "second declension" nouns in English period. Second declension nouns in Latin have the ending -i when plural, but in Greek they have the ending -oi (kouros -> kouroi, e.g.). So you should be asserting that the proper plural of the word is kolossoi. (In fact, the reason it's spelled "colossus" with a C at all is because it came to English by way of Latin, which would indeed get you "colossi" as the plural.) But none of this matters, because it's standard in English to pluralize even originally foreign words with English suffixes. | ||
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Ghostcom
Denmark4783 Posts
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riptide
5673 Posts
Nothing irks me more than people who try to impose arbitrary, archaic standards on new areas of language, simply because that's the way we've always done it. Grammar books don't decide language, speakers do, and while I myself use Colossi, I don't see a problem in casters saying Colossuses. In the end, the word that is used more will become the norm, and a blog post is not going to change that. | ||
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Spenguin
Australia3316 Posts
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QuothTheRaven
United States5524 Posts
Or maybe it's Colloxin. | ||
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Tadzio
3340 Posts
That's what makes grammar nazis annoying. They're so caught up in being smart and knowing the rules that they distract from on-topic communication. | ||
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snotboogie
Australia3550 Posts
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deL
Australia5540 Posts
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Sentenal
United States12398 Posts
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Zelniq
United States7166 Posts
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omninmo
2349 Posts
On April 24 2010 18:18 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Correct usage is decided by actual usage in the relevant linguistic community. Word origin may determine initial usage but it does not bind any linguistic community. With most of these "-us" words the plural form "-uses" has entered common usage and is now accepted. Word origins may be interesting from an etymological point of view but they have no normative significance. Allowing this sort of operationalist mentality to corrupt your mind yields us the apathy of the many as kids today run around unwittingly engineering the latest in normative language such as "fail, lol, omg, fffuuu, rickrolled, collosuses" and other meme-laden gibberish as though they are speaking English. What is etymology good for but to tell us what where words comes from, how to use them, and what they mean? New words form all the time. but, these are qualitatively different from compacted grammar mistakes and memes. When historical precedents (here it is proper word usage and etymological credence) takes a back-seat to normative usage, or "what the powerful, cool, rich or over-all majority are doing", you get fascism. What is current, or actual, does not therby have any a priori relationship to truth unless you wish to posit that ontological Actuality is predicated by temporality? That being said, say collosuses in your commentary of Starcraft II: Wing of Liberty if you chose. But don't let them teach ebonics to posterity! | ||
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DoomBacon
United States165 Posts
He said Colluxen once too... | ||
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Arbiter[frolix]
United Kingdom2674 Posts
On April 24 2010 20:36 omninmo wrote: Allowing this sort of operationalist mentality to corrupt your mind yields us the apathy of the many as kids today run around unwittingly engineering the latest in normative language such as "fail, lol, omg, fffuuu, rickrolled, collosuses" and other meme-laden gibberish as though they are speaking English. What is etymology good for but to tell us what where words comes from, how to use them, and what they mean? New words form all the time. but, these are qualitatively different from compacted grammar mistakes and memes. When historical precedents (here it is proper word usage and etymological credence) takes a back-seat to normative usage, or "what the powerful, cool, rich or over-all majority are doing", you get fascism. What is current, or actual, does not therby have any a priori relationship to truth unless you wish to posit that ontological Actuality is predicated by temporality? That being said, say collosuses in your commentary of Starcraft II: Wing of Liberty if you chose. But don't let them teach ebonics to posterity! An interesting post but I do not think there is a great deal that is correct in it, with respect. My point can be demonstrated by a simple reductio. Take any initial determination of a word's meaning and usage. Now let the relevant linguistic community slowly modify the practical usage over time until finally everyone (or as close as makes no difference) uses it in the modified way. The kind of prescriptivist position I was pointing to as erroneous would appear to have to maintain that everyone is now using the word incorrectly. And of course this is an utterly absurd position for reasons which should be obvious. This point has nothing whatseover to do with what "the powerful, cool, rich" are doing and can hardly fathom what role they are supposed to be playing in your argument. The determination of correct usage may not simply be reduced to what an "over-all majority" does although there is a connection to the proportionate embeddedness of various usages in the relevant linguistic community. I do not do commentary and when I use a plural form of "colossus" I say "colossi" but this is irrelevant to the general point. | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
to a previous point: of course there are no second declension nouns in english, but our plural forms are subject to the origins of words, which was my point. | ||
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