On 12/7/05, Davdi Silverrock <davdisil at gmail.com> wrote: > > However, I note that for some of your hits, the most recently > published is actually kinda old. I would suggest that either Steve > hadn't settled on a standard yet, or they are just "typos". > I would say that the references that only appear in /Jhereg/, especially, are probably just "rough edges" of Dragaera that get "worn off" by the time Steve's got a few books under his belt. For the other conflicting usages (esp. Issolas, or Orcas) I would suggest that these may simply be alternate plural forms. Either is correct, it is left to the preference of the speaker which to use. Alternately, if you'll pardon the pun, the form of "Orca" vs "Orcas" may depend on whether you are talking about a group of Orca from one family grouping, or talking about all the various Orcas in all of their various clans. Kind of the way it's "Fish" for several fish of one species, but it's "fishes" for many different species of fishes. (And yes, I know that orca aren't fish.) My feeling is that the words that are exactly the same as ours (Orca, Phoenix, Dragon, Hawk) should probably just pluralize the same way as we do, with the caveat that they may have an alternate form (esp. Orca, and possibly Phoenix) that is the same as the singular. The other houses, so far as I can see from the text ev, is probably always the same in both singular and plural form, with possible exceptions of Issola and Maaaybe Chreothas, but this last one is only found in /Jhereg/, so I have doubts as to its enduring veracity. Phew. That's a mouthful. Majikjon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://dragaera.info/pipermail/dragaera/attachments/20051208/7632f07b/attachment.html