I didn't say that they were the same usage rules. - Edit 1
Before modification by LiterateDog at 02/06/2010 06:37:44 AM
However, if your usage rules are correct, it would be minutias anyway.
I simply said that those are more examples where modern American English does not pluralize properly and no on thinks anything about it because it's our language.
As for using stadia/stadiums and the others: I prefer stadia, too, and know that it is correct original language usage. But it would be pedantically insane to go around correcting others on it. We don't speak Latin or Greek or French here. We speak American English which of takes foreign words and makes them our own, sometimes changing them. Such is the case with the words mentioned in this post.
I hate that people use "gender" in place of the word "sex". People do not have a gender, they have a sex. Words have genders. However, I've had to accept that our language does evolve. Grit your teeth like I've had to and get on the train. Otherwise, despite whatever you or I tell ourselves in our heads or how superior it might make us feel, we'll be nothing more than over-educated fussbudgets engaging in reactionary pedantry.
