Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 9

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August 9

Word for too hot food frustration

Is there a word for the aching sense of anticipation and frustration when you have food in front of you that's too hot to eat (think just-come-off-the-boil noodle soup, but it could apply to other situations), or for the time period until the food is cool enough. I bet some language has a word specific to this. Anyone?--68.160.243.210 (talk) 02:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Well German allows you to construct composite nouns, so Zuheißespeisefrustration could theoretically exist, although I wouldn't suggest slipping it into conversation. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 19:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That may depend on your definition of "word" though. I had heard someone suggest that writing German compound nouns as one word is simply an orthographic convention -- according to him they are prosodically similar to English compound nouns like too-hot-food-frustration. By that token, "too-hot-food-frustration" itself is equally valid. Besides, I'd imagine talk of "having a word for ___" in German is pretty meaningless in the same way that the Eskimo words for snow myth is. Mo-Al (talk) 05:54, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

In German though words really are constructed from different parts. Take Gewissenlosigkeit (Gewissen = conscience; losig = without; and keit = ness) = lack of conscience. Rechtehandregel = right-hand rule. Then there's always the famous Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft and the recent parliamentary Rindfleischetikettierungs-überwachungsaufgaben-übertragungsgesetz. PS: in your example I don't believe there should be a final hyphen before the word "frustration". -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 18:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Well yes, that's why I gave the Eskimo language example. Mo-Al (talk) 05:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Anticipation —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.58.82 (talk) 17:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Or impatience. — Kpalion^(talk) 17:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Dollar sign

Why does the Dollar sign symbol come before the number? It's not spoken that way. Seems it should be written as 20$, not $20.

<email redacted> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.14.236.18 (talk) 03:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

the reason for this as far as i know is because it is awkward placing cents before the dollar (1.99$) but i think it's nonsense because we write 4.55% and say four point fifty five percent. things like #5 are acceptable because we say 'number five'. in many places (french speaking at least) the $ is placed after, ex: 6.70$ - although it's not standard. i follow that format regardless. in quebec it's not all that weird to put it after the number, so go for it! 24.201.190.95 (talk) 04:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe it is correct to say four point five five percent, and not four pouint fifthy five. 78.151.123.131 (talk) 15:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe that's less true in French or German. —Tamfang (talk) 20:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's done that way with the Pound sterling also. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 04:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Same for the Euro. However, not all languages put the $, £ or € before the number: in France, the symbol comes afterwards (3,55 €) -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 15:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, currency signs are put in front of the numbers in the English language, but after it in many other languages, like French, German, Swedish and Finnish. E.G. (talk) 18:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The dollar sign, originally a peso sign, was invented by British colonists in America at about the time of the revolution, so its placement just followed the existing practice for the pound (sterling) sign. It is therefore necessary to ask why the pound sign is placed before the amount in pounds, and this I do not know. --Anonymous, 18:37 UTC, August 9, 2009.

Not all written text exactly reflects how we say it. Such as dates: if a text ran "... happened on 31 March ...", we'd read it aloud as "... happened on the thirty first of March ...". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a third option too: to write the currency sign instead of the decimal point. This was popular, for instance, in France in the times of the French frank. 10 F 20 would be read out exactly how it's written, "10 franks 20". This pattern seems to be used less with the euro now. — Kpalion^(talk) 07:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, in French the comma is used as a separator instead of a full stop, and the franc, like the euro, came at the end, thus reading 99,99 F. Read outloud this gives "quatre-vingt-onze francs quatre-vingt-onze centimes". On a side note, when the final exchange rate of the euro was fixed, 5 decimal places were used for 'precision' (1 euro = 6,55957 F) [1]. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 18:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You mean either "91,91 F" or "quatre-vingt dix-neuf..." -- Flyguy649 ^talk 17:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, yes. Half asleep evidently. Meant quatre-vingt-dix-neuf francs quatre-ving-dix-neuf centimes = 99,99 F -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 18:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I've always supposed that ₤/$/€ goes first so that it's harder for the unscrupulous to insert a digit before the first genuine digit. (It's not only English; I saw it in Italian too, L850.) —Tamfang (talk) 20:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

What's stopping the unscrupulous from inserting a digit after the number: L8500? — Emil J. 10:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

If the number is written in full, the decimal point: "$850.00" is pretty much closed off to additions the right or left. +Angr 10:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

If we are talking about being unscrupulous, there is always the turning a 3 into an 8, not that I've ever done that of course. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 18:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The opposite was a gimmick of an episode of Adam-12, iirc. —Tamfang (talk) 03:45, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

In Portugal, prior to the introduction of the euro and back when the escudo was worth enough to make it worthwhile having centavos, the escudo/dollar sign was used as the decimal separator, thus 25$50 - twenty five escudos, fifty centavos. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 18:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

small arabic translation

there is a cassette rip found online but the titles on the scanned cover are in arabic. anyone able to translate them? thanks!
image source
24.201.190.95 (talk) 04:13, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I can only tell you that the artist is Hamid el Kasri, mentioned in our gnawa article. --Cam (talk) 05:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

On top it's written "Second part". However, the song title are in an Arabic dialect (or another language) I can't understand. Eklipse (talk) 09:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

History of Berber latin alphabet

I am currently working on the Central Morocco Tamazight article, and one question which other editors have posed is regarding the Berber Latin alphabet. Specifically we need a source stating how long it has been in use for Berber in general. Mo-Al (talk) 04:51, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd guess you've already looked at this site which says the alphabet has been used since the 6th century BCE? It cites as a reference O'Connor, M. 1994 "The Berber Scripts", The World's Writing Systems, 1st ed, Oxford University Press. School is out in the UK at present but when it resumes in the Autumn I can probably find the book. Thanks to Hicham for the link - if you need more information he may be a useful person to ask. MuDor (talk) 23:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This is a useful source. However, I wasn't referring to Tifinagh, but rather the Berber Latin alphabet. Mo-Al (talk) 03:30, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

A kind of lexical gap?

What is it called when there is a kind of lexical gap which it seems to be forbidden to fill? Two examples in English are:

• The lack of a singular, gender-neutral, animate pronoun
• The lack of a word for a period of 24 hours other than "day" (forcing the circumlocutions "24 hours", "48 hours", etc.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.35.96.24 (talk) 09:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I think you just coined it: "Lexical Gap". Sounds like a scene in an old western. :) For the first point, that gap has been comfortably filled (not to everyone's liking) by "they". I don't understand the second part. What's wrong with "day" or "24 hours"? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 09:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It's ambiguous with "day as opposed to night". Is there any language that distinguishes "day" in the sense of "period of 24 hours" from "day" in the sense of "portion of a day (sense 1) in which the sun is up"? When I was first learning French, I hoped that that was the distinction between between journée and jour, but it isn't. +Angr 10:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

So "day" being used for both "24 hours" and "daytime"/"daylight hours"? As in "one day's time" vs. "during the day"? But I'm just trying to define the problem. That's not what he asked, which is the term, if any, for such a "lexical gap" other than "lexical gap". (If there's no such term, maybe that lack of a term is its own "lexical gap".) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 10:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Lexical gap is not recursive! Lacuna matata, to modify one of Angr´s witticisms. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Lacuna Matata - that's the name of the opera being performed at the saloon in Lexical Gap. This reminds of the Alaskan mountain called Denali, which we call "Mount McKinley" and which sounds like some kind of exotic name in the local language, but it just means "the great one", i.e. the biggest one there. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 11:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

By sheer good fortune, I am aware of the linguistic creativity of Alaskan poets whose language is "soaring under the midnight sun" worshipped by "the rugged hardy people" of "this great state like that grizzly guards her cubs". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 11:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

And in wintertime, the Land of the Noonday Moon. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

If Americans had waited a while longer to catch sight of Denali, they could have translated the name as Mount Gleason. Deor (talk) 15:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

@Angr: Is there any language that distinguishes "day" in the sense of "period of 24 hours" from "day" in the sense of "portion of a day (sense 1) in which the sun is up"? Norwegian and Swedish do, no:døgn vs no:dag, "sv:dygn vs sv:dag. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 13:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Those look like variations on the word "day". So how is their usage different from English usage? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In that, in the same language, sv:dygn means 24 hours while sv:dag means day (not night). The words are unambiguous, unlike the English day./85.194.44.18 (talk) 14:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

What about the third meaning of "day", 24 hours starting at midnight and ending at the following midnight? The Scandinavian words aren't unambiguous after all if either of them has that meaning as well. --Anonymous, 18:40 UTC, August 9, 2009.

That is exactly the meaning of the Swedish word dygn: the whole day/date from 00.00 o'clock until 24.00 o'clock (but dag [day] is also used in this meaning sometimes when it's not so important to be exact, and dygn can also mean an exact 24 hour period starting anytime, like if you say "one dygn from now" and points at the clock on the wall, you mean "in 24 hours from now"). E.G. (talk) 19:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Greek had the unambiguous word nycthemeron, which was a compound of the words for "night" (stem nyct-) and "day, daytime" (hemera), to refer to a 24-hour period... AnonMoos (talk) 14:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

What do you know, we actually have an article Nychthemeron... AnonMoos (talk) 14:27, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Hebrew seems to have he:יום and he:יממה; are these such a distinction? --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 16:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In Finnish, "he" and "she" are both translated to hän, so it can be seen as a singular, gender-neutral, animate pronoun. E.G. (talk) 19:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In Hungarian, ő means both "he" and "she" (Finnish and Hungarian belong to the same langugae family).

In English, I is a singular, gender-neutral, animate pronoun, and also one (as in the sentence: "One can't trade with oneself") is a singular, gender-neutral, animate pronoun.

As a Hebrew speaker, I know very well the distinction between YEMAMA (24 hours. if you're an English speaker, pronounce it: YEHMAHMAH), and YOM (a "day" as opposed to a night, although it can seldom mean also 24 hours. pronounce: YOHM), as jpgordon pointed out in Hebrew scripts.

HOOTmag (talk) 22:50, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Slavic languages also make the 24 hours/daytime distinction. Polish: dzień, day; doba, 24h. Russian день, dyen', day; сутки, sutki, 24h. — Kpalion^(talk) 07:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't hold true for South Slavic languages, as far as I know. It's the same ambigous day/day concept as in English here. TomorrowTime (talk) 08:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It does not hold for Czech either, it's den in both meanings. — Emil J. 12:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, correction: Slavic languages I know make the 24 hours/daytime distinction. — Kpalion^(talk) 13:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Bulgarian (South Slavic) does distinguish between the two: ден den "day", денонощие denonoštie "24 h." (lit. day-night). The later word isn't quite as basic and common as the Swedish and Russian words, but it's still used much more often that "nycthemeron" is in English.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Admittedly, den can still be used ambiguously; but so can dag and день.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Same in Polish. It really depends on how specific you want to be. If you say something like "This will take about 20 days to do", then you'd use dzień, because it's quite obvious that you really mean twenty 24-hour periods. But you would use doba in sentences like "Do not take more than six pills within 24 hours" or "This supermarket is open 24 hours." — Kpalion^(talk) 11:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested to know that astronomers (and related people like spaceflight scientists) use the term "sol" (small 's') for a solar day on any planet. On Earth a solar day is a period of 24 hours; on other planets (etc) it is of course different. So far the term has mostly been employed with regard to Mars (whose sol is about 24h 40m) where operating any of the various pieces of hardware we've landed there requires knowing what the local time of day sol is. The Moon's sol is so long (about a month, of course) that it's not an important concern, and the probes we've landed on Venus and Titan didn't survive long enough for it to be much of an issue either. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 23:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Japanese quote

In the movie Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, Tifa Lockhart has a line that in the English translation is rendered "You are going to give up and die, is that it?". Trying to find out exactly what the Japanese original says, I found a website that gives the corresponding line as "このまま死んでもいい・・・なんて思ってる？", which according to romaji.org (I don't read any Japanese lettering) is "kono mama shinde mo ii ... nante omotte 'ru?" While this is close to what it sounds like, I also noticed that wikiquote:pl:Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children gives the line as "Kono mama shinjatte mo ii nante omotteru?" (and the Polish translation as "Nic się nie stanie, jeśli umrę”. Naprawdę tak myślisz?", if that helps anyone). Trying the words in any of these with an online Japanese–English dictionary, I'm having no luck. So my questions, pretty much, are how it should be written in Romanji, and how it translates into English. —JAO • T • C 12:30, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The English translation is accurate enough. "Kono mama" adv. = "the way things are going" (i.e. without taking any action to change things). "Shinde" or "shinjatte" = "die". "~ mo ii" = "~ is okay with [you]". "~ nante" quotes someone's speech/thought with the implication of "what a thing to say/think". "~ omotteru" = "[you] are thinking". Romaji.org correctly romanized the line you gave it. "Shinjatte" is a more emphatic version of "shinde" ("dying"). The line in the movie could have been either one. "Omotte 'ru" and "omotteru" are the same Japanese text romanized in different ways. You won't get far looking up individual words in a Japanese-English dictionary because of multiword idioms like "mo ii" and verb inflections and contractions like "shinjatte" (short for "shinde shimatte" which is the -te forms of "shinu" and "shimau"). -- BenRG (talk) 14:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. As for the romaji.org output, note that another user changed it after my post. But that shouldn't matter much, I guess, because the composition of kana syllables into romaji words is somewhat arbitrary anyway, as I've understood it. Anyway, thank you for your enlightening answer. A subtitled version of the original Japanese trailer, where the line was included, had the text "It's okay to die... do you believe that?", which is the source of confusion here because it sounded much more general that way. I guess they chose that translation there (although it doesn't seem entirely correct) because it's more emphatic and memorable; the more specific question about Cloud's intentions definitely makes more sense in the actual context though. —JAO • T • C 17:15, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if that helps, but the Polish version literally means: "Nothing will happen if I die. Do you really think so?" — Kpalion^(talk) 06:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The transliteration of kana into romaji is not really arbitrary - it's got its rules. The only thing you could maybe call arbitrary is the positioning of the (in Japanese non-existant) spaces between words, but that usually follows the logic of languages that use spaces - i.e. you use spaces to separate different sentence parts. BTW, I'd transliterate your quote as "kono mama shinde mo ii... nante omotteru?", because the "ru" part at the end is part of the verb before it. TomorrowTime (talk) 08:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The 'ru was my fault.--Radh (talk) 19:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

As a native speaker, I'd transliterate the quote as "konomama shindemo ii...nante omotteru?". Oda Mari (talk) 13:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See what I mean? :) TomorrowTime (talk) 17:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Plural of "formula"

A number of us at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Plural nouns are having a dispute over the proper plural of "formula". I believe I can summarize the discussion as follows:

• Everyone agrees (or at least believes) that in Latin, the plural of "formula" is (in the nominative case) "formulae".
• We are trying to speak English, not Latin.
• Some users say that it is acceptable to pluralize "formula" as "formulas" in English.
• Other users say that it is necessary to pluralize "formula" as "formulae" in English.

I'm hoping that the reference desk can tell us which of these is generally considered more correct in formal, written, encyclopedic English. Any thoughts? Ozob (talk) 19:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In scholarly writing, "formulae" is more appropriate. Exploding Boy (talk) 19:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

wikt:formula says: "formula (plural formulae in scientific use, formulas in informal use)". --Tango (talk) 19:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a pointless discussion (I'm here)- since both are in common use by experts eg [2] , [3]] why not let people do as they wish, since they already are doing that.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This is similar to a debate awhile back about "stadiums" vs. "stadia". Common English usage is "stadiums". Show-offs write "stadia". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 19:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

"Stadia" is pretty much the only correct usage when referring to multiples of an ancient Greek unit of length... AnonMoos (talk) 20:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I should have clarified that I was referring to sports venues. You would be right about the Greek unit of length. Some take it to mean that the plural of a sports venue is "stadia". Your comment suggests that is a misunderstanding of the term's origin as a measurement, not as the building containing that measurement. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 20:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The question was about academic writing, where Latin plurals and Latin and other foreign terms in general are common practice, not just the work of "show offs." Exploding Boy (talk) 20:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure the plural of "formula" appears in many academic writings. I'm not so sure that the two "Yankee Stadia" would. :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 20:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

These issues are conundra that have no easy "one size fits all" solution, Ozob. I would very much like to agree with you that "We are trying to speak English, not Latin", and it would be tempting to advocate the eradication of all foreign plural forms from English. I'm more than happy to write "bureaus" rather than "bureaux" (Fr.). But on the other hand, I'd be very loath to render the plural of criterion (Gk.) as "criterions", or the plural of phenomenon as "phenomenons". Much less would I ever use "criteria" or "phenomena" as singulars, which has become a popular trend. It's funny how it's apparently ok to misuse the adverb "awhile" when one means "a while", but when one uses "stadia", one is called a "show-off". That sounds like inverse snobbery to me, Bugs -- JackofOz (talk) 20:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Just be glad no one talks about "criteriae" or "phenomenae". Aargh, spoke too soon - plenty of Google hits for both, including some from organisations that should know better. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the same kind of hypercorrection that leads to things like "prefices". Somehow, these errors sound worse than their opposite. —JAO • T • C 05:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Only if you take it seriously. :) Also, don't forget "media" as a singular. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 21:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In common usage, "media" is a mass noun, like "information" or "goo", so it takes a singular verb. The plural "media" -- referring to a group, each member of which is a distinct medium -- is much more rarely what people mean. Railing against a word gaining a new meaning, just because it doesn't have exactly the same grammar as the existing meaning, is pointless prescriptivism. rspεεr (talk) 22:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Myself, I wouldn't advocate eradicating all foreign plural forms; User:Declan Davis has made the point repeatedly in our WT:MOSMATH discussion that the plural of "basis" is "bases", not "basises", and no one would want it otherwise. So it's really a matter of English-language usage; this is what I meant when I said that "We are trying to speak English, not Latin"; English speakers say "bases", not "basises", but they also say "bureaus" and not "bureaux".

Anyway, I think I've answered my own question. [4], a very large collection of scientific preprints, offers a full text search. Plugging in "formulas" and "formulae", I get:

• 55870 hits for "formulas".
• 45490 hits for "formulae".

So it seems that both forms are acceptable. Ozob (talk) 23:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

What about insignia? It seems that English doesn't use the singular insignium at all, but I don't understand why. — Kpalion^(talk) 07:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The singular is "insigne", although we don't use that either. ("Insignium" is actually the genitive plural.) Adam Bishop (talk) 07:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know that, thanks. I don't know Latin, I was just going by the Polish usage where insygnium is the singular and insygnia is the plural. But anyway, is there a way to distinguish, in English, between a single piece of insignia and several ones? — Kpalion^(talk) 07:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Since they are both acceptable, all that matters for wiki is that it is consistent throughout the article (WP:MOS#Internal consistency, and strongly discouraged from being changed after that. —Akrabbim^talk 12:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

A question to the Latin sticklers: What if the word occurs in an oblique case? For instance, do you then also say "Inserting this result in the above three formulae" - which would be incorrect Latin, or do you say iusta Latina: "... in the above three formulas"? — Sebastian 20:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

In all cases, without exception, for all languages ever borrowed from, English never adheres to case distinctions — the full extent of its grammatical fidelity, at most, is adherence to pluralization conventions, and even this isn't adhered to in the vast majority of cases. That applies equally if the declined form happens to look like a plural form; it's still not acceptable to decline any English noun (pronouns are the only standard exception). Besides which, Latin doesn't have an 'oblique case' per se: The object case in English corresponds to multiple cases in Latin, not only the accusative ('formula' as direct object, in Latin 'formulam' pl. 'formulas'), but also the dative ('formula' as indirect object, etc., in Latin 'formulae' pl. 'formulis') and ablative ('formula' as something being utilized, etc., in Latin 'formulā' pl. 'formulis'). English simply does not care about cases, regardless of whether or not you're otherwise adhering strictly to Latin pluralization. -Silence (talk) 21:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Me think, English cares about cases. — Sebastian 21:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec) My two cents' worth of pedantic affectation:

• I'm irritated when plural 's' is tacked onto an explicitly singular ending (–us, –um, –is; –s as in lens [=lent+s]), and wish that English had adopted those words without such endings. (This doesn't apply to a-stem nouns like formula, whose singular nominative ending is zero.)
• For the same reason, I'm also sometimes uncomfortable when words with explicit nominative endings (again, –us, –is, and plural –ae, –i) are used where other cases would be appropriate, but I'm not going to make an issue of it — except that I bloody well wish that writers of fiction set in Ancient Rome would use the vocative when appropriate.
• On another hand, most Romance nouns (and adjectives) are descended from the Latin accusative case: formulam, formulas (with final /m/ usually lost), so I'm happy with formulas, regardless of what case it 'ought' to have.

I'm incidentally reminded of the word nemeses in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. —Tamfang (talk) 21:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that there's no need for singular endings in most cases, at least in principle. If you want to start saying dat and dats instead of datum and data, or formule and formules instead of the whole formula(e/s) shebang, I'll support you all the way. But I think it's understandable that this standard isn't the one English ordinary appeals to for load-words. :) -Silence (talk) 21:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

What's your evidence for the claim that they're descended from the accusative case, Tamfang? Saying they derived from the accusative, then dropped the accusative ending, is tantamount to being descended from the nominative, which is the standard /default form of the word anyway. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See Vulgar Latin, JackofOz. It's universally excepted by all etymologists that the accusative case, in Latin Latin and early Romance, came to dominate and spread in usage (much like the verb habere did in verb grammar) until it supplanted the nominative. Since -m is believed to have hardly ever been pronounced (except as a slight nasalization of the preceding vowel) for most of the Latin language's history, it was an exceedingly easy shift for the -m to be dropped, and this explains why we have words like art (degraded from arte, which degraded from artem) instead of having words like ars (or at least some related form without a t), which is what would be expected if the nominative had proliferated instead. Look at pretty much any third-declension noun that survived the decline of Rome and you'll see the same pattern. -Silence (talk) 21:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, remember that, even in the singular alone, in most instances simply dropping the m will not result in the nominative form re-emerging. This is only the case for first-declension nouns like formula (which do form the accusative merely by adding an m), but in the second declension, dropping the -m (in accusative -um) will result in -u, which is a far cry from the standard nominative -us. Likewise, as I noted, most third declension nouns have radically different nominative and accusative forms. -Silence (talk) 21:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I except ... er, accept, your answer.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 21:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, you can see analogous occurrences in our own language. English is full of degraded, shortened forms (when's the last time you heard "kissed" pronounced with two syllables?), and you can also see what little case system we have sliding back and forth, as people overuse "me" ("Me and Alex went to the mall"), then overcompensate by overusing "I" in the wrong circumstances ("Has she met Alex or I?"). Given enough time, it's entirely conceivable for even a common word like 'I' or 'me' to take over a different case's function, much like 'you' completely took over the original function of 'thou'. -Silence (talk) 21:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Those two mistakes are frequent. The extremely simple way to determine if it should be "me" or "I" is to test without the third party. "I went to the mall" > "Alex and I went to the mall" and "Has she met me?" -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 17:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Note that all non-neuter nominative singulars have –s *except* the first declension (a-stem). Or are there some exceptions in the third declension (consonant-stem)? —Tamfang (talk) 04:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, for a start there's all those n-stem words with –o in the n.s. —Tamfang (talk) 06:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

	nom.sg.	acc.sg.	nom.pl.	acc.pl.
a-stem	a	am	ae	ās
o-stem masc	us	um	ī	ōs
o-stem neut	um	um	a	a
i-stem m/f	is	em	ēs	ēs
i-stem neut	e	e	ia	ia
cons.stem m/f	s	em	ēs	ēs
cons.stem neut	—	—	a	a
u-stem m/f	us	um	ūs	ūs
u-stem neut	u	u	ua	ua

I prefer "formulas". Somehow I've failed to pick up on a widespread preference for the Latin plural in scholarly writing, and it's not for lack of attention on my part. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:01, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I too recommend "formulas". In science articles, "formulae" is acceptable, but rarely necessary. In non-science articles, always use "formulas". The only common English words that should be pluralized with "-ae" are alga (algae), alumna (alumnae—but I advise against using this word and 'alumni' at all), amoeba (amoebae), larva (larvae), nebula (nebulae), nova (novae), etc. You'll notice that these are all scientific and academic words, but not all such words bother to consistently employ -ae: cf. aortas, amphoras, etc. I honestly don't even see the slightest point in using forms like togae in lieu of togas. If you love Latin plurals, go use them on the Latin Wikipedia. The goal of Wikipedia is accessibility; although we rely extensively on academic resources, we are, unlike academic papers, for the most part are writing for general audiences, not for specialists versed in jargon and archaisms. -Silence (talk) 03:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This may be yet another example of international variance. I think you'll find "formulae" is preferred in British English, and I would guess it's vice-versa for US Eng. Both have notable support as correct usage, so see WP:ENGVAR to find the correct way(s) forward. Top tip is to ensure that each article is consistently in British or American English (generally, not just with this word). --Dweller (talk) 10:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

In logic, where formula is a technical term, most people write "formulas", including native British speakers. — Emil J. 10:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)