Join the forums, it's free and it's fast.
Doesn't it have to be "Fora"? As plural of Forum. I always find it somehow strange when people say "Forums". Yet of course I can, and most likely will(does it have to be "- and most likely will -" ?), be wrong.
In german, I nearly never use Dashes or Semicolons, but many Commas(in german - by the way - it would be Kommata as plural of Komma [=comma]).
Why can't you say "Join the forums, it's free and it's fast."? I mean, wouldn't it be something like "Join..., because it is...", a causal subordinate clause?
It's because we use English forms of words which, invariably, fossilize the nominative singular and add our own distinct declensions where pertinent (Latin would do this to foreign words as well, usually relegating them to third declension order.) The reason you don't say Fora is the same reason most of us don't say Akhilleus for Achilles. The exceptions are few. One is, for example, the plural of a word ending in s, such as Ajax (Aias). What then will you say, Ajax's (yes, there were two for those who haven't read the Iliad)? Better just go Aiantes. Same with Cyclops to Cyclopes, which follows the third declension plural that the Greek Kuklop- root does. What does, however, get me extremely annoyed in this, is the few people who try and be pedantic in their use of Latin and use the plural of Formula, ie. Formulae. Invariably they pronounce it 'For-mule-ay', which is wrong unless you're speaking Church-type Latin. If you're going to be like that about things, at the very least don't sound like a fool to those that have actually studied the language, and say it 'For-mule-ai'. But best suggestion is always go with the Anglisized form of words, which in this case is simply adding an 's' for a plural. Forumlas, or Forums, and so on.
On some very rare words, though, you end up using not the nominative in English, but the root itself. For example, 'adamant', which in fact is declined 'adamas/adamantos/adamanti/adamanta' (Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc); adamant- is the root, and we get the word from it, rather than adamas. A curious one is the Greek for giant, which comes to us in BOTH. If we speak using the nominative form we get 'gigas.' But if we take the genative 'gigantos' and remove the ending, we end up with the root 'giant', which we use most often.
An interesting other tangent is what the following poster said regarding octopus/octopi. The irony is that in those words, which are masculine (as opposed to the feminine formula/formulae and neuter forum/fora) and the i is retained, people still mispronounce, speaking the 'i' as the 'ae' in 'formulae' should properly be pronounced. The 'i' in Octopi should not be 'ok-toe-pie' but 'oc-toe-pee'.
Anyway, basically the words must change for the language that adapts them, because more often then not it will sound strange to ears that are not trained in the language.
By the way, if anyone has any Latin questions, feel free to ask. I've done an entire year of the stuff, which might not seem like a lot, but I've done Greek as well for longer yet, and that gives me some understanding of that Latin which I might not yet have learned.
The thing actually is, there are other usages for 'fora'. I figured there might be (it being such a short word) and when I looked it up, sure enough. It could be an imperative from the verb foro, meaning 'I pierce' (thus being a comman like 'pierce!').
Oh, my, all this Latin. Isn't this an English thread?
