I ‘d like my professor to use proper grammar, i.e. the proper plural of syllabus.
Unless I missed it, I only see him using the word “syllabus” as a singular in this piece.
The prof is correct. Regardless, most people would get the plural spelling of syllabus wrong. How would you spell it?
It acceptable in common practice to use non-Latin plurals. Tou don’t say “stadia” for the plural of “stadium,” or “gymnasia” to describe multiple sweat factories. Yes, plural of “radius” is “radii,” but two or more discuses aren’t disci.
On the other hand, a group of more than one dingus can be called dingi. Or they can be called by their proper name: Democrats.
I ‘d like my professor to use proper grammar, i.e. the proper plural of syllabus.
If we’re going to carp about the grammatical usage of a word taken directly from Latin, we may as well require the entire nominal declension be correct; to wit, there are four renderings of the plural, syllabi, syllaborum, syllabos, and syllabis, if we assume the word to be in the second declension, as its ending would suggest...
Actually the etymology of the Latin word is uncertain, and thus the OED recognizes either syllabi or syllabuses as proper English pluralization...
Where exactly did he refer to any syllabus other than his own?