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At 1:01 PM -0400 6/29/01, Steve Rowe wrote: >Rick Jelliffe wrote: >> Is there any word in English which uses the -ta plural >> (apart from in Rap)? > >At least 80 of them, by my count: > Interesting, with the single exception of stigma of the words on the list I actually recognized, particularly these three: > 4. anathema/anathemata >23. enema/enemata >24. enigma/enigmata >78. trauma/traumata >19. diploma/diplomata >20. dogma/dogmata I would be inclined to say their plurals end in "s", not "ta". In fact my spell checker flags a lot of the "ta" endings as incorrect even when it recognizes the singular word. At Altavista: The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: anathemas 3146 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: anathemata 338 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: enemas 47753 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: enemata 122 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: enigmas 37075 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: enigmata 266 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: diplomas 278171 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: diplomata 21654 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: dogmas 47722 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: dogmata 1909 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: traumas 91838 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: traumata 6105 That's not quite as bad, but then I realized most of the traumata pages were in German. And of course: The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: schemas 175591 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: schemata 50078 so schemata's doing better than most of the other words but schemas is winning 3 to 1. I think what's going on hear is that the "ta" plural is just so bloody weird to an Anglophone ear, that it cannot survive in a common word. I decided to try some uncommon ones: The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: fibrosarcomas 1220 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: fibrosarcomata 12 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: chiasms 1565 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: chiasmata 1490 That one's almost even but chiasmata is still losing. The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: stemmata 2501 The number of Web pages that contain your search terms: stemmas 556 Finally! a word where the "ta" ending actually seems to be preferred by a large majority of users, not that I know what it means. I think it's obvious that the more common the word is the faster it's going to go into an Anglicized ending. -- +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer | +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ | The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001) | | http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/ | | http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+ | Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ | | Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/ | +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
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