I think Steve concentrates on a few houses at a time. Then on the next book he concentrates on a new group and completely contradicts himself. On 12/8/05, Jon_Lincicum at stream.com <Jon_Lincicum at stream.com> wrote: > > 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/20051211/813756bd/attachment.html