Pedants' Paradise

[Roehre]

...sounds like pretentiousness on the part of whoever posts up the blurb on the website. Dona eis requiem surely translates as 'give them peace', so if 'requiem' is a noun meaning 'peace', you surely can't have 'peaces'. If a Requiem has come to mean a piece of music honouring [?] the dead, then in English, Requiems must surely be the plural. Come on, Jean, expand on your 'No!'

The noun Requiem stems from the first words of the Introitus of the Requiem Mass: Requiem aeternam (= eternal peace).
It's an accusative here, the nominative is Requies (like in Berio's work of that name in Memorian Cathy Berberian)

[ardcarp]

Quite agree. My dona eis requiem sees it in the accusative too. But we're talking about plural forms here, not case.

[jean]

I was so shocked I had to go and lie down for a bit.

The plural even for the noun requies in a non-liturgical context doesn't occur. If it did, it wouldn't be requiae, because requies is third declension. There's no such word as requiae.

I don't know when people started to use the single word as a shorthand title for the Mass or how they did the plural, but it wasn't Missae da requiem - there's no preposition da in Latin. In the Roman Missal these masses are called Missae in commemoratione omnium fidelium defunctorum.

[Beef Oven!]

I couldn't believe it either - spilt my can of Skol all over me Doner Kebab!

[jean]

But we're talking about plural forms here, not case.

We have to talk about case though; it's accusative because in both the examples it's the object of a verb, but once you've wrenched it from its context, it has no reason to be in the accusative. It isn't really a Latin word any more.

.

[kea]

John Zorn's Aporias is subtitled Requia for piano and orchestra. I don't think that's the correct plural either, but I'm not sure what is (apart from 'Requiems' of course, and even that's rather colloquial).

[jean]

The word is first found in English in the fourteenth century I find. Early examples are usually in the form Mass of requiem. The OED doesn't give any plural examples until the mid-C19, by which time I suppose people were beginning to appraise different settings of the text.

[Despina dello Stagno]

Tomorrow’s CD Review:

11.20am New Releases: Requiae

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04t91rg

Maybe I should post this on the Pedants’ Paradise but is requiae plural of requiem?

I don't think that anyone could produce such gibberish spontaneously.
I think that it is perhaps an inadvertent garblement of "Reliquae", or the rest, where the rest just happen to be requiems.

[french frank]

I'll move this to the Pedantry thread when the programme has finished, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requia Here, Requia appears to be the plural of Requiem (=Requium?). So presumably Requiae is the (sort of 'correct') plural of the incorrect plural. Indicating a plural plural.

[verismissimo]

If there was not such a word before, there may well be now, if it's picked up by others. Living thing, language. Even dead language.

[jean]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requia Here, Requia appears to be the plural of Requiem (=Requium?). So presumably Requiae is the (sort of 'correct') plural of the incorrect plural. Indicating a plural plural.

That looks like the explanation. I did wonder if someone had read requium for requiem, but to get requiae you need to go through the stage of reading the notional neuter plural requia as a first declension singular.

If there was not such a word before, there may well be now...

Like the ersatz Italian verismissimo!

[verismissimo]

... Like the ersatz Italian verismissimo!

Just like that, jean.

[french frank]

the [notional] neuter plural requia as a first declension singular.

A sort of analogy with opus - opera (pl) > opera (sg). I think there are Romance examples of n.pl > f.sg, but I can't think of one just at the moment.

[BBMmk2]

I'm dying to find out.

Rather rather deadin here! :)

[french frank]

I think there are Romance examples of n.pl > f.sg, but I can't think of one just at the moment.

Velum, a sail, is often pl in Latin; so vela > la voile. Less understandably, pirum, pira > la poire. I believe the 'unsteadiness' began in Vulgar Latin ...