History Main / PerplexingPlurals

* There's an old Italian joke where a man doesn't know if the plural for "Belga" (a person from Belgium) is "Belghi" or "Belgi". He eventually resorts to write down "Un Belga. Anzi due!" ("One Belgian. I mean, two!")

* The girls of ''Series/ICarly'' spend a fairly large amount of "iGo to Japan" arguing of the current plural of the word "possum".

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': In one episode, the team is interviewing a mother-daughter witness pair whose last name is Casillas. Castle, being interested in language, points out that it's a hard name to possessive-pluralize, as it would be "Casillases's." This leaves Ryan confused how to just pluralize it, causing him to stick on too many "esses."

* Once upon a time, in the days of USENET, there was a discussion on sci.lang about the proper plural of ''Elvis'', a useful discussion, since impersonating Elvis is an industry. The majority would have the plural go like pelvis, that is ''Elves''. A respectable minority found a Greek declension class for the purpose and opined that Elvis in the plural should be ''Elvides''. Neither side admitted the plural ''Elvises''.

* Utterly and completely [[DefiedTrope defied]] in Finnish, where the standard Finnish grammar is consistently enforced even among loanwords. This is even considered to apply to trademarked names, thus even if a made-up word isn't supposed to have a plural form it does have one even in official Finnish translations (e.g. [[Franchise/StarWars "jedit", "sithit"]][[note]] Also, certain nouns that are capitalised in English are not in Finnish, such as nationalities ('[[UsefulNotes/{{Norway}} norjalainen]]') or members of religious groups ('[[UsefulNotes/OrthodoxChristianity ortodoksi]]'). Both the Jedi and the Sith are considered to belong to the latter category.[[/note]] or [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} "Pikachut"]]).

* Creator/DavidLangford has had two recorded issues with the question of "more than one DeusExMachina". The [[https://ansible.uk/writing/platens3.html first time]] he started with "about three ''deus ex machinas''", altered this to ''dueses ex machina'' and then ''dei ex machina'', before his wife, who's a linguist, told him it was ''di ex machina''. And then the editor decided it was ''deus ex machinae''. The [[https://ansible.uk/writing/mexicon5.html second time]] was an argument with Peter Nicholls while compiling the ''SF Encyclopedia'' over ''dei ex machina'' or ''di ex machina'', which led to a RunningGag at Mexicon 5, as their Nicholls-inspired mascot was credited with all kinds of incorrect plurii.

* Creator/DavidLangford has had two recorded issues with the question of "more than one DeusExMachina". The [[https://ansible.uk/writing/platens3.html first time]] he started with "about three ''deus ex machinas''", altered this to ''dueses ex machina'' and then ''dei ex machina'', before his wife, who's a linguist, told him it was ''di ex machina''. And then the editor decided it was ''dues ex machinae''. The [[https://ansible.uk/writing/mexicon5.html second time]] was an argument with Peter Nicholls while compiling the ''SF Encyclopedia'' over ''dei ex machina'' or ''di ex machina'', which led to a RunningGag at Mexicon 5, as their Nicholls-inspired mascot was credited with all kinds of incorrect plurii.

* In one episode of ''More of Less'', the BBC Radio 4 show about numbers, presenter Tim Harford bemoaned that his other employer, the ''Financial Times'', was bowing to popular usage and treating "data" as singular. Amongst the replies he got from listeners disagreeing with his position was one saying that everyone who didn't like it could stick their pedantry up their ba.

* Richard Lederer's "[[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2573/is_4_29/ai_n29150810/ Foxen in the Henhice]]" is based around the same concept.

* ''WebOriginal/SCPFoundation'' states right that the beginning of the [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/nexus-series Nexus Hub]] that the correct plural is "Nexuses." The reasoning for this is fully explained in the page discussion.

* Some Russian jokes deal with the unpredictable nature of Russian plural nouns. An example from Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}:

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' tends to have a lot of fun with plurals, with "box" becoming "[[Creator/BrianRegan boxen]]", "kiwi" becoming "kiwus", "fruit basket" becoming [[Manga/FruitsBasket "fruits basket"]], and "liar's pants" becoming [[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium "liar's pantses, precious"]]. Items which you can only legitimately have one of tend to have plurals calling NoFairCheating; for example, the plural of "Staff of Ed" is "Staves of Ed, you dirty exploiter you".
* Nobody in the ''VideoGame/{{Freespace}}'' fandom is sure what the plural of "Sathanas" is supposed to be (given that it's an alternate name for {{Satan}}, it probably doesn't have one). Expect to see "Sathanai", "Sathanes", or "[[RuleOfFunny Sathanaseses]]" depending on the fan in question. The game itself avoids the issue by always referring to that ship class as "Sathanas juggernaut(s)".

* While never mentioned in-universe, there are occasional Administrivia/{{Edit War}}s on the ''Franchise/{{Resident Evil}}'' wiki about the plural of "Cerberus". Since "Cerberus" is the Latin form of the Greek "Kerberos", the Latin plural "Cerberi" is probably correct. Since the word is being used as an English word here, some people (and dictionary.com) might say "Cerberuses" is also acceptable. [[note]]Apparently, the plural of the Greek "Kerberos" is "Kerberoi".[[/note]]

Part of what you know when you know a language is how to make your words fit into a grammatical system. This can be fairly simple, as in English (the odd -s here, the odd -ed there) or fairly complex, as in the Russian case system. One thing all systems have in common though, is that they work all the time. For every singular, there is a plural.(Though there are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun cases where there is neither]].) It might be regular (trope, tropes) or irregular (goose, geese), but you know it's there and you know what it is.

* The Sultan's advisors in ''WesternAnimation/HugoTheHippo'' can't agree on the plural of "hippopotamus", suggesting "hippopotamuses", "hippopotami", and even "hippopotamus", before the Sultan cuts the Gordian knot and calls them "hippos".