![]() Which brings us to the Great Chemotherapy Debate. Like ''processees.'' The plural of ''process,'' a vogue word in diplomacy, ought to be ''processes,'' pronounced ''PRAH-cessuz.'' (British is ''PRO-cessuz,'' but the first syllable is not what's bugging me.) For no good reason, language snobs have been pronouncing the last syllable ''ease,'' as if on the analogy of ''crisis'' and its plural, ''crises.'' ''The same is true fo r 'emphasis,' 'diagnosis,' 'prosthesis' and many other words ending in ' is,' '' writes Dene Walters, M.D., in The Journal of the American Medical Association, ''but not for process, or for abscess either two of them are abscesses, not 'absces-sees.' '' Although some la idback lexicographers may accept anything, I stand with this Wilm ington, Del., physician, who correctly points out that while the p lural of ''basis'' is ''base-eez,'' the plural of ''base'' remains ''baseuz.'' In the same way, elitist newscasters knock the ''she'' out of ''negotiate'' in their chi-chi pronunciation, ''negosee-ations.'' ''She'' is right ''see'' is incorrect and an affectation. Neumetzger of Newburgh, N.Y., finds abrasive. Phil Donahue, the Moral Majority's least favored sex therapist, pronounces ''controversial'' as ''contro-ver-seeul,'' rather than ''controvershul,'' which Mrs. In another development, the ''see-for-she'' substitution is rampant on television. As a result, punloving headline writers have given up on ''radical sheik'' and turned instead to ''fair sheik.'' In recent years, Americans have been adopting the British pronunciation, which is closer to the Arabic (though the Brits don't go for that little ''kh'' fricasee at the end). (The Arabic word has a scraping sound at the end, called a voiceless velar fricative, which we can safely ignore.) Hyland's note - if it were supposed to be pronounced ''sheek,'' it would be spelled ''shiek,'' like ''shriek.'' But it is spelled ''sheik,'' from the Arabic shaikh, pronounced ''shake,'' which the British have been doing all along. In American use, ''sheek'' was the standard pronunciation, as any singer of ''The Sheik of Araby'' will tell you. Other pronunciation queries and ukases: ''On the spoken word -when did 'shake' replace 'sheek' for pronouncing the oily one: shiek?'' asks Vi Hyland of Nassau County, N.Y. The plural of 'processes' is the same: it's a regular 'add an s' plural, so I don't see any reason, either phonological or etymological, to change this to 'eez'.While isking around, we should take care to preserve the vanishing ''s'' in ''asterisk.'' The little typographical flower that sends you down to the footnote is not, as some say, an ''asterick.'' People who say that also say ''ek cetera,'' as they bunk into each other. Like dozens of other "ordinary" plurals - such as 'horses', roses' or 'crosses' - the plural of 'base' is pronounced 'bas-iz'. The plural of 'base' is the same as for most other words ending in an 's' or 'z': it adds a syllable. The Latin plural of 'basis' is pronounced 'baz-eez', just as the plural 'crises' is pronounced 'cris-eez'. The -is -> -es pattern is a completely different plural form from the standard 'add an s' form we see in the majority of English words. This is not simply a case of elongating the more usual -iz sound. ![]() All of these form their plurals by changing the spelling from 'is' to 'es' and changing the pronunciation from 'iss' to 'eez'. There are many other words which follow this pattern, for example: crisis, diagnosis, thesis, analysis. ![]() When we pluralise 'basis' to 'bases' or 'parenthesis' to 'parentheses', we're using one of several Latin plurals which we have in English.
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