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Plural of "lingua franca" | ||
Tags: Singular/Plural | Poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tudwell Groupie United States Joined 5830 days ago 41 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Icelandic | Message 17 of 31 28 December 2009 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
1. I'm pretty sure I've heard all of those (except "datums" - but who says "datum" anymore anyway?). 2. Those are common and ingrained in the language. If we changed it now, it would only cause people confusion. There is no consensus as to the plural of "lingua franca." It's not Latin, so applying Latin endings to it is silly and unnecessary. Most English speaking people, even highly educated people, don't know how to decline Italian nouns and adjectives (not anywhere to the level that we're familiar with Latin, Spanish, and French). So I would opt for "lingua francas." It sounds most natural in English. I also say "cul-de-sacs" and "octopuses." Because I'm speaking English, and it makes sense to follow English rules of morphology, rather than switch to some foreign code that whoever I'm conversing with might not know. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Akalabeth Groupie Canada Joined 5523 days ago 83 posts - 112 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese | Message 18 of 31 28 December 2009 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Lingua francas gets my vote. Just because the etymological history of various words
results in them having irregular plurals doesn't mean we need to apply those standards to all other words with similar histories. Languages have irregularities, and these get passed on through the generations because people just happen to use the irregularities, not because people make any sort of conscious decision to inflect them based on their etymology. Barring any established usage, I think the best choice is whatever is most obvious to the most number of people. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 19 of 31 28 December 2009 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I must say I'm quite surprised by the results of my own poll. I didn't mention my personal favorite initially to keep things fair, but as we're getting clobbered, I think it's time to come to the defense of "linguas franca."
First of all, I admit that there is no great solution. However, I find the Latin declension truly absurd. Yes, the phrase is Latinate, but it's actually a loan from Italian, and I just don't see any logic at all in adding a third language to the mix. Furthermore, there are plenty of cases where Latin plural rules clearly do not apply, or at least are not at all in vogue. For example, I am a pretty well-read native speaker and I have never, ever heard of the word "genera". The Italian plural strikes me as highly awkward, as it resembles nothing else in English and therefore can't really even be recognized as plural. I think the key point is in how English treats phrases such as cul-du-sac as single units for morphological and descriptive purposes by utilizing dashes. This isn't just for foreign loans, it's a pretty common aspect of the language. For example, take the phrase, "My well-being suffered," and compare it to "My well being suffered". If the phrase were lingua-franca, then I think the plural "lingua-francas" would be acceptable because it's a morphological modification of a single unit. However, "lingua francas" makes no sense at all. English almost never (does it ever?) pluralizes adjectives, and certainly never uses a plural adjective with a singular subject. As "lingua franca" literally means "Frankish language," the only reasonable plural is "linguas franca" -- "Frankish languages". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Akalabeth Groupie Canada Joined 5523 days ago 83 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese | Message 20 of 31 28 December 2009 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I kind of agree with your logic, but I see the term lingua franca as a single unit in
English. Franca isn't even an English word as far as I know; it only ever appears with lingua. It might just be the types of things that I read, but I don't think I've ever seen lingua used in a separate context in English either. The first page of a Google search only finds lingua used in proper nouns (e.g. Lingua Radio, Project Lingua) and lingua franca. Certainly not a common word to be used on its own at any rate. I don't think the presence of a space necessarily means it should be treated as two separate units, although I can't think of any other examples in English where that isn't the case. May be worth pointing out that Merriam-Webster lists two plurals: lingua francas and linguae francae. Also, culs-de-sac and cul-de-sacs. Not that I would claim dictionaries are correct a priori on these matters, but it gives you an idea of the usage. Reminds me when someone learning English (or any language) argues that something should be correct that isn't. I'd say the most authoritative response is simply, "That's not the way we talk." Edited by Akalabeth on 29 December 2009 at 12:01am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5540 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 21 of 31 29 December 2009 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm with Tudwell on this, from an English point of view the "correct" way to say this plural would be lingua francas, but if I'm having a conversation in Spanish I'd say linguas francas instead because it sounds more natural from a Spanish point of view. Using another form would sound ultra correct and even pedantic.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 22 of 31 30 December 2009 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There's some good material in there. When you go to a seance (note, not "séance", because I'm not speaking French), it's a "medium" who speaks with the dead. Google will reveal that these people refer to themselves as "mediums". Here's some quotes, each from a different website: "Britain's Top Mediums"; "Best psychic mediums - Author and magazine editor, Bob Olson, presents a list"; "Group and private sittings may be arranged with visiting Mediums and Psychic Truth Society's Church Mediums"; "Online live psychic readings – Phone or Text Mediums, clairvoyants, Tarot card Or Email for your Real Genuine personal reading." If you go into a shop, you probably wouldn't ask for "three smalls, two media and a large" -- you'd ask for "three smalls, two mediums and a large" (and you certainly don't decline "medium" into adjectival case, as pedantic Latinism would suggest). We also talk quite frequently about "mediums of communication" and "communication mediums" -- Google returns 269,000 hits for the first and 46,600 for the second. Still, this is subtantially less than the hits you get using "media", but is suggests that we are trying to regularise the terms and naturalise them into English. That brings us onto "the media", which seems to have split off to become an independent word. "The media" to most is a collective term for... things which don't have a single overarching umbrella term. We do not think of "the media" being the set containing each individual "medium" -- no, it's just "the media", and that's that. In informatics (my degree subject), we talk a lot about "data", but we use it analogously to "information" -- in fact, data is widely regarded as merely meaning computer-based or mathematical information. A single "datum" may be talked about by many academics, but more often than not I saw the term "data-point" used in its place.
Let me ask you this: is there a hyphen in the spoken form or not? Yes, it's a facetious question, but do not mistake the written form for the word -- it is a mere representation of the word. The word "would" has no L, regardless of what the written form says, agreed? If you look at any language, it is clear that irregularities/exceptions are only supported in common words -- "to do" and "to say" may be irregular because we use them enough to remember their irregularities, but "to proselytise" and "to milk" are pretty rare in common speech, so it would be impossible to remember their conjugations if they didn't follow the rules. Similarly with nouns -- we talk about "children" enough that we remember the irregular "-en" but in most other words we have to stick with the modern "-s" plural ending because we don't use them enough to remember an irregular form. So it goes with "lingua franca". The general rule in English is that only the head noun gets pluralised, which should give us "linguas franca", but there is another rule to consider: the head noun is the last noun in a noun phrase (excepting any prepositions). As neither "lingua" nor "franca" have any independent meaning in English, the automatic reaction for the monolingual English speaker is to consider "franca" the headword, hence "lingua francas", which I voted for. Actually, that's not quite right. As neither word has any currency in English outside the phrase, the phrase is a single unit -- a word, basically -- so saying "linguas franca" is like adding an infix, and English doesn't deal in infixes. If "lingua franca" is an inseparable unit, the S can only go at the very end -- "lingua francas". And as Akalabeth says:
I know I'd always say "lingua francas", anyway. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 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 23 of 31 31 December 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If I had to use the word in plural in 100% English I would probably also choose Lingua Francas. But only because I know that everybody would think I had made an error if I used the correct foreign form, which is the Italian one.
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| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5177 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 24 of 31 13 October 2010 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I was surprised you were right, Iversen, you are a mine of information and none of it useless. I was sure it was a late latinism, from the time when the Roman Empire was collapsing. As for the plural I am sure it will be a "demotic" decision with no reference to origins. We English mangle the language faster than anyone else does to theirs. I think there would never be a French-style English Academy to keep the language "pure," whatever that contentious word may mean. I wuz wrong, Guv, I really wuz, I chose the Latin plural. Edited by Old Chemist on 13 October 2010 at 10:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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