Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Snail on December 07, 2007, 05:34:40 pm
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Okay. At first I thought the plural of Sathanas was Sathani. However, I write that everywhere and Goober5000 comes and tells me that it is, in fact, Sathanes, with further support from Just Another Day (not that JAD is a reliable source, but I expect it should be reliable there). Then, just today, I go over to the FS:Halo board and blam Admiral Nelson comes down like a hawk says it is, in fact, Sathani. Goober5000 and Nelson are both reliable sources and now I am confused. If I was a computer right now you would be seeing the BSoD.
So, Sathani or Sathanes? :confused:
What's Latin for Sathanas?
S-Sathanus?
Goes like?
Annus?
Vocative plural of Annus is?
Eh, Anni?
Sathani.
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To confuse you even more: I'd say Sathanas is a name and i think there is no real plural for any name. You also cannot really translate it.
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Hehe, you said anus. But dunno. Just use Sathanases or Sathanaseses or something.
Or what Prophet said. Sathanas is really just a not so in-your-face way of saying Satan. So just circumvent it somehow, like with the rest of the ship classes.
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Sathanas is Greek, not Latin. It is a first declension masculine noun. Its plural in Greek is therefore Sathanai (not Sathani). We do not generally carry Greek plurals into English. Therefore the only plausible plural of Sathanas in English is Sathanases.
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To confuse you even more: I'd say Sathanas is a name and i think there is no real plural for any name. You also cannot really translate it.
Well, I can always say... "Steel Prophets," can't I? And Black Wolves, Goobers or even Karajormas (Karajormae?).
Hehe, you said anus. But dunno. Just use Sathanases or Sathanaseses or something.
Or what Prophet said. Sathanas is really just a not so in-your-face way of saying Satan. So just circumvent it somehow, like with the rest of the ship classes.
Six straight years, me boy.
What :v: did was replace Sathanases with "Sathanas juggernauts" and stuff like that. But I must know what the plural is. Because I HATE people who don't know the plurals of words. And I hate self-loathers too.
Sathanas is Greek, not Latin. It is a first declension masculine noun. Its plural in Greek is therefore Sathanai (not Sathani). We do not generally carry Greek plurals into English. Therefore the only plausible plural of Sathanas in English is Sathanases.
I know it's not Latin, if I said it was Latin *someone* I know would come here and hit me very hard with a baseball bat. If the ending is Sathanai, why did Goober and JAD suppose that it was Sathanes? Are there two declensions which end in -as? Or did they just get it plain wrong?
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A Sathanas Juggernaut - Many Sathanas Juggernauts.
As I was taught in high school English class - if you don't know how to say it, figure a way around it and be done with it. :p
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I HATE YOU because you don't know the plural of some words are!
You cannot spend your life avoiding plurals!! One day you WILL NEED to know the plural of Sathanas, and when that day comes...
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To confuse you even more: I'd say Sathanas is a name and i think there is no real plural for any name. You also cannot really translate it.
Well, I can always say... "Steel Prophets," can't I? And Black Wolves, Goobers or even Karajormas (Karajormae?).
Prophet isn't a name. Neither is Wolf. Sure you can always just put "s" at the end of every word to get your plural but you wouldn't have asked if you wanted to make it that easy for yourself :)
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But I must know what the plural is. Because I HATE people who don't know the plurals of words. And I hate self-loathers too.
And I hate people with strange obsessions. And who said I'm a self-loather? I loathe humanity in general, not just myself. And I already told you. Nelson already told you. Say Sathanases. Or what our good friend Herra Tohtori also suggested. Circumvent, man.
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Well this is where I stole my Sathanes joke (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,12211.msg227290.html#msg227290) so I tend to think its Sathanes.
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I HATE YOU because you don't know the plural of some words are!
You cannot spend your life avoiding plurals!! One day you WILL NEED to know the plural of Sathanas, and when that day comes...
...we won't have long to live. Since the only time one might need to shout that in the streets is is the shivies decide to throw a BBQ party in Sol.
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:lol:
To me it is significantly more important to know what is the singular of Erinyes.
Technically you can't say "An Erinyes" since Erinyes means The Furies, in plural. And "A Fury" sonds silly and un-erinyes like, and direct translation of fury to modern Greek is "Mania", which is even less like Erinyes (and more than little humorous), slthough it actually is more tha ncorrect since the Erinyes have been historically referred to as "Maniae" (the Madnesses) as well as many other things.
If the plural of Sathanas is indeed Sathanes, then it would be logical to assume the singular of Erinyes would be Erinyas, but since the body of the word is different I suspect it won't really work this easily.
But if someone knows, please tell me. Some day I might need it desperately. :p
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Sathanas isn't a native Greek word, either -- it is the Greek representation of Hebrew Satan. English has simply adopted Hebrew Sathan unchanged. It is therefore a bit odd to even think about the word Sathanas in English. Sathanas is merely how the demotic Greek bible represents the Hebrew word.
I do not know where the -es plural idea is coming from:
See ταμίᾱς example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_grammar)
New Testament Greek PDF (http://www.inthebeginning.org/ntgreek/lesson9/n-1d.pdf)
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To me it is significantly more important to know what is the singular of Erinyes.
In german that's quite easy ;)
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The singular is Ἐρινύς (Erinus, or in English Erinys).
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Thanks! :)
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I'd say you don't use plural forms of a ship's class name. A method which seems to be repeatedly used during the campaign.
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Oh frak. I've been upstaged by Admiral Nelson. Even worse, I'm guilty of perpetuating an urban legend. :(
I too relied on Sesquipedalian's linguistic authority for the plural of Sathanas. Unless Sesq was talking about an ancient form of Greek, or something, it appears that he was incorrect.
EDIT: Here we go. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Greek_grammar#Masculine nouns) Sesq was right after all, but he was talking about modern Greek. The -as to -ai pluralization only occurs in ancient Greek.
So both Sathanes and Sathanai are correct, depending on what era you're from. :)
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Sathanas appears to be a strange noun. It takes its genitive in a, of all things. Obviously, the word never appears in the plural in the bible (or anywhere else, for that matter). My dictionaries don't have biblical Greek in them, either. I'd have to find a primer of Biblical Greek which discusses proper names to provide a definitive answer. Nobody should really use anything but Sathanases in English no matter what the Greek plural.
Edit - in *Modern* Greek nouns ending in -as have the plural in -es. It isn't clear to me if that can be found in Koine.
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And it's still a name. Whats the Plural of John? Jeff? Daniel? Victor? Jason? Michael? Smantha? Judith? Kate? Jennifer? What-ever...
You see what i mean
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Exactly, This is why there is no plural form of the word in Greek. And so the discussion of whatever its plural might be silly. :)
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Thanks :)
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Well, on some occasion plurals of names are used: Your Mom has a lot of Johns.
:drevil:
Although, in this case, it's not a proper noun any more but rather a synonyme to "customer".
On some ship classes it's easy to form the plural because the ship class is not a proper noun. Names like Deimos, Hercules and Hecate are all proper nouns (names of unique things), whereas Valkyrie, Manticore, Basilisk and some others already have a plural form because they are names of groups of things.
But it would indeed be kinda stupid to talk about how many Nimitzes the US Navy has... :rolleyes:
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But we form the plurals of those proper names according to English rules, not the rules of whatever language those names came from. We don't refer to "Nimitzen" aircraft carriers because the name Nimitz is of German origin.
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But we form the plurals of those proper names according to English rules, not the rules of whatever language those names came from. We don't refer to "Nimitzen" aircraft carriers because the name Nimitz is of German origin.
But there are stupid forms like "Ferraris" when "Ferrari" is already plural. Spaghetti is already plural and the singular is spaghetto. I have also read "Saettas" instead of "Saette", "pizzas" instead of "pizze", etc. etc.
And those are adaptions of foreign words to your language. It doesn't mean they're correct. It's normal for an English or American to add "s" and "create" the plural form of a word.
Here we're discussing about English words. The plural of "Il film" is "I film" but someone says "I films" because in English you add the letter s. It's a matter of opinions, depends on wheter or not a word should be adapted. The examples I mentioned are stupid, what's the point in having the plural form of a word that is already plural?!?
On a side note...you're all wrong. First of all, there's no "h" in the Greek alphabet so the singular is Satanas and not Sathanas. There are two "t", Tau and Theta. The second one serves as "th", but in Satanas there's a tau, not a theta. The plural is Satanai, but don't forget the "duale"(I don't know the English for "duale"...dual?).
In Greek there also was the "dual", so:
One Sathanas juggernaut: Satanas.
Two Sathanas juggernauts: Satana or Satanain, depends on the cases.
Three or more Sathanas juggernauts: Satanai.
;)
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I thought I couldn't be more confused than I was when I started this thread. Now I'm twice as confused.
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?
Add the "h" if you want, that is not going to make the difference.
If you see a Juggernaut, say "A Sathanas!!!"
If you see two Juggernauts, say "Sathana!!!" or "Sathanain!!!"
If you see three or more Juggernauts, say "Sathanai!!!"
Where's the problem? :confused:
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?
Add the "h" if you want, that is not going to make the difference.
If you see a Juggernaut, say "A Sathanas!!!"
If you see two Juggernauts, say "Sathana!!!" or "Sathanain!!!"
If you see three or more Juggernauts, say "Sathanai!!!"
Where's the problem? :confused:
Well Nelson, Sesq, Goober and Axem all have different views as well as their reasons. What is to say yours is the correct one?
(I'm not saying that yours is wrong, I just don't know which is correct)
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Mobius is correct that 'Sathanas' has a tau and not a theta in Greek. It is rather strange to use the Greek form of the word in English, anyway. I can only guess that openly calling the juggernaut 'Satan' was thought to be too over the top by Volition. They used the Hebrew forms of words like 'Nephilim' and 'Seraphim'. And just to be even more confusing, 'Nephilim' and 'Seraphim' are plurals being used as a singular. :)
In the end don't be confused. The only thing that matters, unless you expect Constantine the Great to be playing your campaign, is that the plural in English of Sathanas is Sathanases. There is no grammatical justification for using the Greek plural forms in English.
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They used the Hebrew forms of words like 'Nephilim' and 'Seraphim'. And just to be even more confusing, 'Nephilim' and 'Seraphim' are plurals being used as a singular. :)
Actually, they used Seraphim as the plural and singular of the bomber. In "The Great Hunt", when one of the bomber wings are destroyed, Command says "The Seraphim are history!" or something like that.
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Another useless note is that 'Ravana' is mispronounced in FS2. The voice actors put the stress on the second syllable, but in Sanskrit (as in Hindi) the stress belongs on the first syllable. Thus RAA-vuh-nuh, not raa-VAA-nuh.
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Well the fact that they know nothing about the "dual" leads me to think that their knowledge of Greek is poor(no offense). I don't study Greek but I'm literally surrounded from people who study/studied it.
Ok, I have just checked The BrickTM(AKA my Latin dictionary). The only forms present are Satan, which doesn't change, and Satanas, ae.(which is m., even with the -ae). The plural of the second form is...wait, is the Satanas a singuralia tantum?!?
In the end don't be confused. The only thing that matters, unless you expect Constantine the Great to be playing your campaign, is that the plural in English of Sathanas is Sathanases. There is no grammatical justification for using the Greek plural forms in English.
Meh...I'm all against "Sathanases", "Spaghettis", "Ferraris" and other horrifying words :P
Seriously, it's better to leave Sathanas...
Another useless note is that 'Ravana' is mispronounced in FS2. The voice actors put the stress on the second syllable, but in Sanskrit (as in Hindi) the stress belongs on the first syllable. Thus RAA-vuh-nuh, not raa-VAA-nuh.
Tsk tsk...you can only imagine how bad the spelling of Orion and Deimos is... :blah:
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Or Sathanas juggernauts, thus avoiding the whole issue. :)
Many plural Latin words are singular in English, such as agenda, etc...
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And Italian, too...
By the way, Happy Sathanas & Holy Mary Day!
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So can I use Sathanes or will that Greek asshole come and smack my head with a baseball bat?
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Well, Sathanes appears to be the only wrong form.
That's what happens when you trust Goober :P
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And Sesquipedalian, and Axem...
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That's what happens when you trust them when they say something about ship names.
And I have even used the form Sathanes for a while!
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Sathanes is what the plural would be in Modern Greek. So you only have to worry about Medieval Greek assholes hitting you with a baseball bat, and they are all dead.
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Modern Greek? It's pretty much like using an Italian word instead of a Latin one.
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Sathanes is correct in modern Greek. Sathanai is correct in ancient Greek. Sathanases is correct in modern English. The only form that isn't correct is Sathani.
So basically, do whatever you want. :)
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I agree with you in considering Sathani a wrong form, but Sathanes isn't that different. As I said, it's like using an Italian word instead of a Latin one.
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True.
You may find it interesting to note that until recently, Latin was taught to be pronounced using English vowel sounds. I will post a poem below illustrating this pronunciation, mostly because it will annoy Mobius. :)
What is it that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo —
"Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!"
Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretched lives like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
A. D. Godley
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In omni Gallia eorum hominum, qui aliquo sunt numero atque honore, genera sunt duo. Nam plebes paene servorum habetur loco, quae nihil audet per se, nullo adhibetur consilio. Plerique, cum aut aere alieno aut magnitudine tributorum aut iniuria potentiorum premuntur, sese in servitutem dicant nobilibus: in hos eadem omnia sunt iura, quae dominis in servos. Sed de his duobus generibus alterum est druidum, alterum equitum. Illi rebus divinis intersunt, sacrificia publica ac privata procurant, religiones interpretantur: ad hos magnus adulescentium numerus disciplinae causa concurrit, magnoque hi sunt apud eos honore. Nam fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt, et, si quod est admissum facinus, si caedes facta, si de hereditate, de finibus controversia est, idem decernunt, praemia poenasque constituunt; si qui aut privatus aut populus eorum decreto non stetit, sacrificiis interdi****. Haec poena apud eos est gravissima. Quibus ita est interdictum, hi numero impiorum ac sceleratorum habentur, his omnes decedunt, aditum sermonemque defugiunt, ne quid ex contagione incommodi accipiant, neque his petentibus ius redditur neque honos ullus communicatur. His autem omnibus druidibus praeest unus, qui summam inter eos habet auctoritatem. Hoc mortuo aut si qui ex reliquis excellit dignitate succedit, aut, si sunt plures pares, suffragio druidum, nonnumquam etiam armis de principatu contendunt. Hi certo anni tempore in finibus Carnutum, quae regio totius Galliae media habetur, considunt in loco consecrato. Huc omnes undique, qui controversias habent, conveniunt eorumque decretis iudiciisque parent. Disciplina in Britannia reperta atque inde in Galliam translata esse existimatur, et nunc, qui diligentius eam rem cognoscere volunt, plerumque illo discendi causa proficis****ur.
Ah, right... c-u-n-t is censored :lol:
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I'm not even going to ask.
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Read the last part, one one about the British... :P
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Something about roman conquering of Brettania?
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I'm not even going to TRY translating that rubbish.... :nervous:
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Bretta what?
No, something about French-British relations.
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It is an excerpt from Caesar that says that people travel from Gaul to Britain to study Druidism. I am not sure why this is relevant. :)
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Enough! I think we now know the answer.