RE: I'm late, I'm late...

["Stewart, Dwight" <Dwight.Stewart@VLSI.com>]

Dracula is from the Wallachian & means The Son of the Dragon.  If Vlad Tepes
had been a dinosaur, he would have been a DEINONYCHUS!!!  :-)
Dwight
        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. [SMTP:th81@umail.umd.edu]
        Sent:   Friday, September 25, 1998 10:17 AM
        To:     augwhite@neosoft.com
        Cc:     dinosaur@usc.edu
        Subject:        RE: I'm late, I'm late...

        At 07:47 AM 9/25/98 -0500, Toby wrote:
        >

        >Mercifully brief Latin lesson follows:
        >
        >In ICZN pig Latin you're probably right.  However "draculae" is
good Latin. 
        > The -a -ae ending is not actually a feminine ending for nouns (it
*is* for 
        >adjectives).  It is a first declension ending.  Most first
declension nouns 
        >are feminine, but a few are not (e.g., "agricola" = farmer).
"Dracula," 
        >because of its -a ending, is correctly treated as one of these
exceptions. 
        > The genitive (i.e. possessive) singular is thus "draculae".

        And, for all I know, "Dracula" may still be a first declension noun
(or its
        descendant) in Romanian.

        >Finally, there's fourth declension which is quite rare in Latin.
The only 
        >time you're likely to run into it is "cornus" = horn.

        And "manus" = hand.

        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
        Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
        Dept. of Geology              Email:tholtz@geol.umd.edu
        University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
        College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661