After August 24th's GG segment on pluralized surnames, one of our followers, whisper19, requested that I discuss the proper usage of Volturi in writing. Seeing as how I'm of Italian origin, and seeing as how the Volturi are an integral part of many a Twi-fic, allow me to give you a brief - and EASY - breakdown of plural formation in Italian.
In English, we don't distinguish between masculine and feminine forms, but all nouns actually have this distinction. And you will find that once you know which gender a noun is in one language, it will remain that way in all languages of the same language family (for example, the six most widely spoken Romantic languages - languages that descend from Latin - include Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and Catalan).
General Italian nouns that end in -o- are masculine, while Italian nouns that end in -a- are feminine.
PLURAL FORMS OF ITALIAN MASCULINE NOUNS ENDING IN -O (SINGULAR, PLURAL, ENGLISH)
fratello, fratelli, brothers
libro, libri, books
nonno, nonni, grandfathers
ragazzo, ragazzi, boys
vino, vini, wine
PLURAL FORMS OF ITALIAN FEMININE NOUNS ENDING IN -A (SINGULAR, PLURAL, ENGLISH)
casa, case, houses
penna, penne, pens
pizza, pizze, pizzas
ragazza, ragazze, girls
sorella, sorelle, sisters
Now, technically the singular form of Volturi would be Volturo - but I highly doubt one would write, "The Volturo approached languidly from his throne." Ahem.
But you would never do the following in Twi-fic:
"The Volturis are coming." Sweet baby Jesus, Volturi is already plural! Do not - I repeat - do not add an -s- at the end!
VOLTURI is a noun unto itself, and as such should never be altered.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
xTullyx has a special request, too, via Twitter:
@xTullyx @ALASL Jasper is from HOUSTON, Texas. Not HUSTON, Texas. Please and thanks. It's driving me nuts. It's an insult to all us Houstonians... DX
See, peeps - here's HOUSTON:
thanks. you are the best :)
ReplyDelete