Latin lovers...

English is such a versatile language because of the flexible way you can interpret what word an adjective modifies. For example:

Is a latin lover someone who likes to write:
-- salsa fora instead of salsa forums,
-- radii instead of radiuses or
-- cactii* instead of cactuses?

Or is a latin lover simply this guy?



* Cactii is a hypercorrect latinisation, because cactus is a greek word.

Ron Obvious said:

-- cactii* instead of cactuses?
...
* Cactii is a hypercorrect latinisation, because cactus is a greek word.

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1. The latin plural for cactus is cacti, not cactii.
2. The Greek origin of the word is kaktos (which does *not* mean the plant we know as cactus), and it was introduced to English in the form "cactus" via Latin, so there is some justification for using the latin plural.

Ron Obvious said:

Or is a latin lover simply this guy?

Click to expand...

This is what I thought when I saw the topic subject... :roll: :lol:

Ok, so there is justification for the use of cacti as plural, but cactuses is still also acceptable.

Anyway, the point was that latin lover can mean someone who loves and is latin, or merely someone that loves latin. This introduces an ambiguity that is not present in other languages that I know of.

Monty Python uses this concept quite ofter for humour, by presenting word that has a certain understood context, but which is used in the other, also grammatical correct, form. Some examples:

There is a Monty Python sketch with evening Italian classes, which turns out to be a class with Italians as opposed to a class for learning Italian.

Or there is another one with a gang of baby snatchers terrorising Bolton. It turn out this is a gang of babies that are snatching people.

Of course if you mention "baby snatcher" the understood context is someone snatching babies.

Hm, rather smth like that:

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