"Viruses" again

[Richard Jensen]

I have been following this with some interest and have learned some
neat stuff about languages.  But one thing that comes to mind, and this
goes back to a thread last year on Latin "collective" nouns, has to do
with using non-English words in normal English writing.  It seems to me
that when we co-opt a word from another language, we do not also co-opt
the rules of grammar from that language.  That is, when a Latin, Greek,
German, Bengali, etc. word is used in English prose, it should be subject
to the rules of English usage, not the rules of usage in its original
language.

Thus, the proper plural of virus, following rules of English usage, would
be viruses.  Of course, such a practice means that words such as datum and
millennium would be pluralized by simply adding an s (and, for those who
decried the prospect of seeing millenniums, take a look at last week's
Time magazine - in the article on Jesus the editors chose to go with
millenniums).  In fact, millenniums is offered as an option in Webster's
dictionary.  The abhorrent datums can be avoided by Webster's usage which
treats data as both plural and singular, as has already been the case (and
who doesn't accept this?) for agenda (e.g., What is my agenda?)

Food for thought?

Richard J. Jensen      |   E-MAIL: rjensen at saintmarys.edu
Dept. of Biology       |   TELEPHONE: 219-284-4674
Saint Mary's College   |   FAX: 219-284-4716
Notre Dame, IN  46556  |