Sometimes the singular of 'geeks' is 'Classics major'

[rushthatspeaks]

My brain has decided to devote valuable processing power to the obviously incredibly important question of whether the plural of 'Netflix' does, in fact, have to be 'Netflictes' in order to be grammatical, or whether we can go with my boyfriend's much more readily recognizable and also cooler-sounding 'Netflixim'. (Yes, I know it ought to be 'Netflick'/'Netflix', but the company name is singular and their product may justifiably be seen as eponymous, therefore requiring a plural for everyday usage. And 'Netflixes' is a tongue-twister.) Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Hebrew to be able to tell off the top of my head, and so I found myself deep in an investigation of my Latin lexicographical and etymological materials in order to determine whether it's a reasonable third declension noun, and then I realized what I was doing.

... so can anybody who knows anything about Hebrew answer the question so I can stop thinking about this and actually go do something with some degree of relevance to anything ever?

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

"Netflix" is both singular and plural. Just pretend it's Japanese.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Another option would be netflixen, but I rather like the idea of backforming the singular "netflick" and leaving the eponymous "netflix" for the plural.

You might ask gnomi about the Hebrew.

[marith.livejournal.com]

batwrangler's suggestion is more elegant, but I find "netflices" geekily appealing.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

I'm with batwrangler: one netflick, many netflix — or should it be, one netflick, many netflicks, one batch of netflix (however many you can have out at one time)? And let's not neglect the verb: "We netflixed three seasons of Doctor WHO." — or should that be "netflicked"? That doesn't sound right to me.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The verb is definitely 'netflixed'-- that's the one that seems to come out naturally.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. The scary thing is, I was actually using this verb last year, but couldn't remember which way it went just now, and was having trouble judging because I don't subscribe anymore.

[aethereal-girl.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with Netflixim. The theoretical alternative is Netflixot (or -oth, if you like a more old-timey looking spelling), but there's no reason to think it ought to be preferred, and -im is statistically more common.

In general, Hebrew plurals are not that complicated. If you wanted to make it an Arabic broken plural, that would be . . . more challenging.

[wherdragon.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's a question of whether or not you want "Netflix" to be a standard, feminine noun...

Though is it just me, or does the "x" sound off in a Hebrew word? I kept coming up with "Netflikoth" or "Netflikim". That's an alternative.

[breadandroses.livejournal.com]

X tends to be transliterated "ks" IME, so Netfliksim?

[mixedborder.livejournal.com]

Netfliksim! I like that one best. Comes trippingly off the tongue, and sounds really cool.

[eredien]

"Netflickoth?"

My brain just came up with a suprisingly beautiful image of a seraph made entirely of DVDs.

[(Anonymous)]

The masculine/feminine thing is a bit of a red herring; there are plenty of masculine nouns that take an -oth plural[1]. The only time the im = masculine and -oth = feminine rule is really reliable is when a word has both a masculine and feminine equivalent, such as adjectives, names of animals, professions, etc. I don't think that Netflix falls into this category, so there's no reason that the plural of Netflix couldn't be Netflixoth, except inasmuch as it's a neologism and Hebrew will tend not to assign -oth plurals to such unless they are clearly morphologically marked as feminine.

As far as that goes, it's true that Netflix is fairly clearly a foreign word, not just because of the -x at the end but also because of the -tfl- in the middle, and the large number of consonants in general. There's not much you can do to disguise that. However, modern Hebrew at least has no problem borrowing a word that ends in -x and slapping -im or other Hebrew morphology onto it without alteration.

If you want to come up with a plural for Netflix that actually looks at home in Hebrew, you're going to wind up with something along the lines of Pelkei-net, at which point you should ask yourself whether it was really worth it.

[1] My Syriac teacher, when he was teaching Hebrew, used to do a routine where he would ask what the rule for forming the plural in Hebrew was. Inevitably, a student would reply that -im was for masculine nouns and -oth for feminine.

"What are you sitting on?" the teacher would say.

"A chair (kiseh)," the student would reply.

"Is that masculine or feminine?" the teacher would say.

"Masculine," the student would reply.

"And what's the plural?" the teacher would say.

"Kisaoth," the student would reply.

And so on. It turns out that there are an awful lot of things that can be found in the average classroom (desk, blackboard, window, if you're lucky curtains/blinds and cabinets) that are masculine but take an -oth plural.

[aethereal-girl.livejournal.com]

And, that last one was me. Sorry.

[wherdragon.livejournal.com]

True, but that was why I said "standard". I wasn't sure if Rushthatspeaks wanted to give it masc. or fem. status.

I didn't know that modern Hebrew regularly puts -im (etc.) on foriegn words with -x endings. Neat!

[zdenka]

As far as I'm concerned, either Netflick/Netflix and Netflix/Netflictes would be okay.

Alternatively, if it's Ancient Greek, the singular is Netflix and the plural is Netflinges. We could mispronounce it slightly as "net-flingies" and that would be sort of fun.

"Netflixes" as a plural sounds kinda cute, but I have no linguistic justification for this.

[breadandroses.livejournal.com]

C'mon, you know "Netflix" is a verb.

Rain. Parade.

[shahnasa.livejournal.com]

Of course, it isn't Hebrew, or Ancient Greek, or Arabic, or even Japanese.

It's American.

Really American.

And I'm going to have to come down on the side of Netflix being both singular and plural, because coffeeandink's icon is so damn cool, and because it doesn't take too much thinking, and sounds right. While I would otherwise support "netflices" or "netflixes" (justification: "helix/helices" or "suffix/suffixes"), those both sound too grammatical to result from a business name.

That's the American way to decide, right?

[sovay]

Sorry; due to reading back through friendlist, I saw this post after its successor. I would suggest Akkadian plurals, but I don't think that will really help the problem. (Besides, what gender is "Netflix" in the first place?) Myself, I have always backformed to the singular, "Netflick"; this also doesn't clarify a thing.

[thespooniest.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Given the spelling of the single, would "Netflix0rz" work?