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On the May 16th show, a caller who works as a waiter asked for the correct plural of hummus, and eventually decided to settle on "two plates of hummus". Along the way Grant happened to declare the Toyota Prius to have a regular English plural "Priuses".
I respectfully disagree. This came up about two or three years ago when two of my fellow Mensa members at dinner had each bought the hybrid. We decided the plural should be Priora.
I had to bring my wife's Prius into the dealer for some work, so I took that opportunity to ask the sales manager if Toyota had an "official" plural form. He gave me a printed copy of a press release from Toyota ... said they get that question a lot so they ran a bunch of copies. But here's that same press release online: http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota-announces-the-plural-of-prius.htm
Toyota listed all the possible variations (none of which were Priora - sorry Ron) and then let the public decide for them. Final verdict: Prii.
Edit: Just checked, and Toyota selected the name Prius from the Latin meaning "to go before" to brand their advanced hybrid technology. So if it's from the Latin, then "Prii" makes as much sense as "radii" (but I don't know for sure if the "i" ending typically applies to proper nouns). If one speaks of the Roman ruler Augustus, does one refer to his family as "Augusti" ? Probably not.
Ron Draney said
On the May 16th show, a caller who works as a waiter asked for the correct plural of hummus, and eventually decided to settle on "two plates of hummus". Along the way Grant happened to declare the Toyota Prius to have a regular English plural "Priuses".I respectfully disagree. This came up about two or three years ago when two of my fellow Mensa members at dinner had each bought the hybrid. We decided the plural should be Priora.
Priora would be a female Prius. Although it's not like we're talking about a Mustang. The Prius is a gelding at best, not a male.
The plural? I'd go with Prii. Or possibly Priii.
You'd think Toyota, of all companies, would be careful about using the phrase "going forward" after it appeared (as their standard corporate catchphrase) at the bottom of a full-page newspaper ad addressing a recent spate of "unintended acceleration" stories and saying they'd look into the problem and make sure all their customers were safe.
Ron Draney said
I was working from analogy with tempus and corpus.
Prius Fugits? Prius Delecti? I don't think either one fits. Why would anyone want two Prii when the Tesla and the Volt are selling like hotcakes? I'm not sure my right hip would allow me to sit in either one. Maybe an electric F150....
Regarding the original question on the show (which I just heard on the podcast), it's kind of the inverse of a remark a linguistics professor made in a class I took many years ago, to the effect that Italian waiters have a problem when people order "one spaghetti"--what do they call it, "uno spaghetto"?
As Grant and Martha pointed out, "hummus" is a mass noun, like "dirt" or "bread," or "spaghetti," which we normally can't use with a numeral unless we specify a unit of measurement. Hence they recommended "plates of hummus" when a plural is needed.
But I think that in food service the matter is complicated by the desire for compactness when giving orders to the kitchen. (I've never worked there, so someone tell me if I'm wrong.) Wait staff don't want to use 3 syllables if they can use 2, and the noise factor may encourage simplicity as well. So they might well say, "I need one spaghetti and two more breads for table 7," even if that seems ungrammatical, rather than "one order of spaghetti and two baskets of bread."
"Hummus," of course, is further complicated by the "-us" at the end, which looks like a Latin singular, which we then want to pluralize in English according to one or another established practice, "-i" as in Latin grammar or "-es" (as in "bonuses"). But it's an Arabic word, and the "-us" is not a grammatical suffix at all. If restaurant staff need to have a plural, and "plates of hummus" is too much to say, I'd vote for "hummuses" for the sake of grammar, even if not euphony.
In a restaurant, "hummis" is the name of a dish, so the waitperson might reasonably say "3 hummus, 2 Pepsi and 1 french fries, just as in a bookstore. a teacher might order 28 50 shades of gray and 1 fields of grass. The title of the book doesn't cobgugate.
If someone asked for 3 french fries at the drive thru, and only got three [ieces of potato. the manager really needs to do a better job in hiring.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
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