[23765] in APO-L
Re: [APO-L] Alumnus-na-NUM
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Packy Anderson)
Wed May 28 09:53:56 2003
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 09:53:52 -0400
Reply-To: Packy Anderson <packy@dardan.com>
From: Packy Anderson <packy@dardan.com>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <F32001085EA6D211B61B00805F6FE69E04EAD779@exchsv2.ogsnet.ogs.state.ny.us>
On Wed, 28 May 2003, Vehlow, Richard wrote:
> For those with no gender, there's alumnum. Alumna would be plural for
> the neuter.
Sorry, REV, thank you for playing. "Alumnus" is its own neuter form, and
"Alumni" is its plural. "Alumna" (sngular) and "Alumnae" (plural) are
distinctly feminine forms of "Alumnus".
If you want to get into the Latin, "alumnum" would be the accusative form
of the nominative "alumnus", and it's plural would be "alumnos". Of
course, my Latin is extremely poor, so I'll defer to those who actually
_studied_ it.
In any case, there isn't an English word "alumnum". The four English words
accepted for proper usage are "alumnus", "alumni", "alumna" and "alumnae".
-packy
--
Packy Anderson packy@dardan.com
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