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Plural of "lingua franca" | ||
Tags: Singular/Plural | Poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5812 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 1 of 31 27 December 2009 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Over the course of my HTLAL life, I've repeatedly flinched at the sight of the plural "lingua francas," a phrase I took to be a poor-man's "linguas franca." What's next, attorney generals? Lawyers with armies, that's the last thing we need. It's a slippery slope, people.
Yet another sighting of the malevolent phrase this afternoon finally drove me over the brink, so I actually Googled the thing. It turns out my long-held rancor may be largely unfounded. The wiktionary entry contains this little nugget:
I feel that this sort of linguistic uncertainty can only lead to doubt, misery, and possibly fracas. (Fracases?! Uh-oh.) Then it occurred to me: who could be more qualified to settle this confusion than the members of this forum? Hence this poll. Please carefully weight the options, make the choice most reasonable to you, and explain yourself below if so compelled. Let's end this madness once and for all. Edited by Woodpecker on 27 December 2009 at 6:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 31 27 December 2009 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Linguae francae - This is the correct Latin nominative plural form (a-declination), therefore this form receives my vote!
Fasulye 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5525 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 3 of 31 27 December 2009 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lingua francas - let's not make life more difficult. :)
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 31 27 December 2009 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This expression is Italian, so if it was used in the plural the logical thing would be to use the Italian plural form - but I have never seen it used in the plural. However it looks like Latin (and could have been Latin) so attempts to inflect it as a Latin construction should be hailed as laudable attempts to avoid plurals expressed in broken English.
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| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 5 of 31 27 December 2009 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I simply avoid using lingua franca in the plural. "Ligna francas" is plausible but I tend not to use it, because it feels a bit artificial.
BTW, what about linguas francae? Maybe we should compromise and combine the different options ;). Edited by Sennin on 27 December 2009 at 9:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| trance0 Pentaglot Groupie Slovenia Joined 5751 days ago 52 posts - 78 votes Speaks: Slovenian*, English, German, Croatian, Serbian | Message 6 of 31 27 December 2009 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Agreed. If we use correct Latin/Greek plurals for other nouns (such as alumna/alumnae, index/indices, testis/testes, addendum/addenda, agendum/agenda, criterion/criteria etc) I see absolutely no reason why we should treat 'lingua franca' any differently. Edited by trance0 on 28 December 2009 at 12:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 7 of 31 27 December 2009 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
...datum / data. There are many examples for plurals that originate in Latin, but "linguae francae" simply doesn't look like English. No wonder it's unpopular. Maybe for a scientific text it would be appropriate to form the plural in that way, but not in any other context. In my opinion, lingua franca comes only in the singular and any attempts to form a plural are doomed ;p. Edited by Sennin on 27 December 2009 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 8 of 31 27 December 2009 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What is Esperanto for Lingua Franca?
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