Sorry to take so long to reply. It's just a result of my job and the fifty women that I slavishly serve - they made me "not" do it - whatever that means.
Card is right about why I hyphenate these plural loan words. I first saw this particular usage in Trevor Leggett's translation of Shankara's commentary on the Yoga Sutras. I have not yet found an American scholar doing the same. However, I like it because it reinforces the recognition that these Sanskrit words (read Arabic for "Houri") are provisional terms, not necessarily fit yet to be reified into English. I understand how you, as an editor, might find this mode of presentation to be contra-instinctual for a trained English reader. However, rather than just dismissing it, tell me why you might find it confusing or irritating. emptybill --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister <no_reply@> > wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> > > wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, billy jim <emptybill@> > wrote: > > > <snip> > > > > The Houri-s sound so much better. > > > > > > OK, I can't stand it any longer. > > > > > > With plural nouns, why do you put a hyphen between the > > > word and the "s"? > > > > > > > I'm not at all sure, but in my understanding he > > does it if he thinks a word is not a genuine > > loan word from another language into English, > > but a word of another language used amongst English > > text. > > Aha! I'm sure you're right. > > For instance, if you consider the word > > 'siddhi' a loan word from Sanskrit to English, it's > > OK to write the plural as 'siddhis', but the Sanskrit > > (nominative) plural would actually be the rather awkward > > 'siddhayaH' as in > > > > te samaadhaav upasargaa(,) vyutthaane siddhayaH. > > > > But if you don't think it's a loan word (yet), > > it seems to me quite cool to write the plural > > like 'siddhi-s'. That's probably not a convention > > accepted by native English grammarians, though. > > In typeset material, such a word would be set in > italics, but the "s" would be set in roman. If all > you've got is roman characters, though, I suppose > the hyphen is a reasonable way to indicate the "s" > isn't the foreign plural form. > > However, in an informal context such as this, I'm > not sure it's really justified; it makes the > material harder to read, and there's no important > purpose served by it. > > > > > > > > For instance the Finnish word 'sauna' is, AFAIK, nowadays > > a genuine English word borrowed from Finnish, so > > it's OK to write the plural like 'saunas', but > > the Finnish (nominative) plural would be 'saunat'. > > >
