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Hi Uche. Without disagreeing at all with your larger point about newspeak, I cannot (pedant, no doubt) let the following pass uncorrected: Uche Ogbuji wrote: > Neuter plurals of the fourth declension end in "-us". Examples off head > are "manus": hand and "acu": needle. I always remember that "anus", in > the fourth declension neuter does *not* mean what the smirking English > speaker first thinks. These three nouns are all feminine, not neuter, in grammatical gender. They are all famous 'gotchas' because they have feminine gender in the otherwise usually masculine/neuter fourth declension. 'Manus' has an alternate second declension form; anus, 'granny', fourth declension feminine noun with a short a, is infamously confused with anus, second declension masculine noun with a long a (because the following s, present in e.g. Sanskrit, has dropped out in Latin), which does mean what the smirking English speaker imagines; and acus (the correct nominative form; acu would be ablative) is notoriously confused with the second declension masculine noun acus (both have short a), the 'gar' or 'needlefish'. > Neuter plurals of the fifth declension end in "es". The most common > example is "re": thing, matter. Others off-head are "fides": faith and > "spes": hope. These are also all feminine, not neuter, nouns. My challenge to find an exception to neuter plurals ending in -a therefore still stands, though I would prefer we got back to XML. Best regards, Walter Perry
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