Oh, I see. Now it's Priuses again

http://www.toyota.com/prius/yellowstone/index.html

 

Hi Jason:

___Not the Priuses, Prii, Prius’ debate again

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

Although Prius is a greek word, it's no different than other greek words that "fell" into the English language. For example, "sphera" became "sphere" & "spheres". We use Greek words, but adapt them to English rules.

Priuses

 

Will we eventually see Priuses'es?

 

I'm just going to use the Japanese adaptation.. which is just Prius
In Japanese, singular and plural are the same in most cases

 

That's because the Japanese don't have plurals. They say stuff like, "We took 2 ball home."

I'm English, so I prefer to just add an "es" to the end per English standards.

 

Not true. When words end in "s," often we just keep it the way it is.

We went over to see the Pickles at their new house.
We went over to see the Prius...

We went over to see the Johnsons at their new house.
We went over to see the Prius'...

 

Japanese can have plurals... but I think it mostly deals with people
Like you all or we.. stuff like that

I choose to use the Japanese way just because I'm biased Designed in Japan, made in Japan, balalalakekekee

its totally preference. maybe if its an American made prius I'll call those specifically Priuses

 

As I understand it, the rule of English is to add "s" or "es" for plurals:

*****
calluses
Joneses
Priuses

...even for foreign words like "spheres".

 

Yeah, I saw that web link also. And it kind of flies in the face of proper use of plurals from foreign languages. So here is my take.

Prius is Latin, it means "to come before." English has changed this root word to pre. Such as in the usage, pretreat, prewash, prepayment, etc. The meaning of a verb in English with pre added to it means before (a due date or period in time).

Since Prius is Latin, (sorry last time I checked it wasn't Greek) then the proper plural of it is Prii. However, go to that link that Jason provided above, and you will find that replacing Priuses with Prii makes the article a bit harder to read. As English speakers we are not comfortable with the Latin plural usage, unless you work in the pure and applied sciences, especially biology or medicine, and then it is commonplace.

My preference is the Latin plural usage, however I don't think that is going to be the standard in written communication, especially from Toyota or the press. Again, Latin plural is so foreign to most English speakers.