A hangup on plurals...

T

tim840

Registered Senior Member
so back when there was an East Germany and a West Germany, would you have said that there were two Germanies? or two Germanys? i know that when pluralizing a word ending in -y, you should change it to an -ie and add -s, but is that still the rule for proper nouns?
 
My gut instinct is that the correct pluralisation in this case is "Germanys", but I can't give you an absolute reason for that. It probably has something to do with "Germany" being a proper noun.

I'll wait for Fraggle to show up and explain all.
 
Hmm...

When a family name (a proper noun) is pluralized, we almost always simply add an "s." So we go to visit the Smiths, the Kennedys, the Grays, etc.When a family name ends in s, x, ch, sh, or z, however, we form the plural by added -es, as in the Marches, the Joneses, the Maddoxes, the Bushes, the Rodriguezes. Do not form a family name plural by using an apostrophe; that device is reserved for creating possessive forms.

When a proper noun ends in an "s" with a hard "z" sound, we don't add any ending to form the plural: "The Chambers are coming to dinner" (not the Chamberses); "The Hodges used to live here" (not the Hodgeses). There are exceptions even to this: we say "The Joneses are coming over," and we'd probably write "The Stevenses are coming, too." A modest proposal: women whose last names end in "s" (pronounced "z") should marry and take the names of men whose last names do not end with that sound, and eventually this problem will disappear.

Source: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/plurals.htm
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Most words which end with Y once ended with IE. Plurals were made by simply adding S.
The singular spelling was changed yet the plural spelling ridiculously kept the IE.
This should be stopped. Plurals should be made by simply adding S.
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
Most words which end with Y once ended with IE. Plurals were made by simply adding S.
The singular spelling was changed yet the plural spelling ridiculously kept the IE.
This should be stopped. Plurals should be made by simply adding S.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I don't know why English speakers/writers have such an aversion to simply adding an S after a Y.

I have a pony, you have a pony, together we have two ponys. What the hell is the problem with that?
 
“ Originally Posted by StrangerInAStrangeLa
Most words which end with Y once ended with IE. Plurals were made by simply adding S.
The singular spelling was changed yet the plural spelling ridiculously kept the IE.
This should be stopped. Plurals should be made by simply adding S. ”

Nasor said:
Agreed. I don't know why English speakers/writers have such an aversion to simply adding an S after a Y.
I have a pony, you have a pony, together we have two ponys. What the hell is the problem with that?
Click to expand...


There seems little or no reasoning to it. When a change is needed, people are super resistant yet people seem to enthusiasticly accept absurd changes.
 
If you Google it, you get about twice as many hits on "Germanys" as on "Germanies." But there are hundreds of thousands on both. I'd say the issue has not been settled and there's no standard English spelling. Throughout the Communist Era we talked about the Two Koreas, the Two Chinas and the Two Germanies, and we spelled it both ways.

Now that the Berlin Wall has fallen, we don't have much reason to talk about Two Germanys. If the question hasn't been resolved by now it probably never will be.
 
Nasor said:
A large fraction of the returns for "Germanys" appear to be people who meant to make Germany possessive but forgot the apostrophe.
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I saw that. But even backing that out, each spelling of the plural seems to appear on a lot of websites. What I haven't found is a preferred spelling from anyone with a claim to authority.
 
I dreamt of visiting both Koreas....

Oh, the question was about Germany. Well, I don't dream about Germany...
 
I would use Germanys.

If my name was Marty, I would dislike it if someone said "Are both Marties coming out tonight?"
 
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