It's amazing when something you take for granted for so long suddenly turns out to be wrong. For years I've always been taught that the plurals of virus, octopus, syllabus, duck-billed platipus and words ending in the same way was always the "i" version.
But it seems that common usage and popularity come into play more than Latin, Greek or Latinized Greek origins do (such as "hippopotami" is correct but because it sounds so pedantic common usage has forced the plural to become "hippopotamuses"). Now I was aware that in the realms of the internet, "viruses" was the accepted plural, but I always believe that to be the product of an amount of "dumbing-down" of language to prevent Joe Soap from getting confused, but perhaps it's more to do with the use of "viri" seems grammatically elitist, so common usage has become "viruses". Been an interesting read-up on this topic I must say, and it would be interesting to see how this translates into American too. MOU ____ • The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM • ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To set a personal password send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words: "set WDVLTALK pw=yourpassword" in the body of the email. To change subscription settings to the wdvltalk digest version: http://wdvl.internet.com/WDVL/Forum/#sub ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
