On Nov 7, 10:15 am, "Nancy Young" > wrote:
> "Sqwertz" > wrote
>
> > On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 11:41:56 -0500, Nancy Young wrote:
>
> >> They must be a barrel of laughs in a Chinese restaurant, given the
> >> plural issues most of their menus have.
>
> > I kinda expect multiple shrimps in my dishes.
>
> And if there's something served with Chinese vegetable,
> I would like to know which one.
>
Sometimes "Chinese vegetable" is short for "Chinese preserved
vegetable," which is a pickled/fermented, shredded kind of radish and
cabbage. But you're right, Chinese menus often don't do a good job
with English distinctions between singular and plural. That's because
the Chinese language most often doesn't make any distinction between
plural and singular, relying on context to make it known which is
which, if it matters in the first place, which it often does not. The
language similarly often omits specificity as to verb tense and
gender. So, "ta shuo" might mean "he says" or "they said" or "she'll
say". Context is everything.

As to the Italian -i plural and -o singular, using the Italian form
just sounds odd in ordinary English. A friend of mine the other day
said he had seen a particularly inventive "graffito." Everyone in the
small group gave him a hard time for pretentiously demonstrating that
he know something about Italian...... -aem