Plural of Forums is Fora?

[HanibalII]

Hey all. Was just wondering whether somebody could explain this for me.

I found out today that the plural of forums is fora. But I've never heard it used before.

Is it still used at all? I thought adding the 's' on forum made it a plural, does that mean forums as a word does not actually exist because of fora?

Does anybody know the root of fora? I know forums has latin roots.


Cheers

[Chicken Sandwich]

"Forum" is a Latin word, so the correct plural form is "fora." However, words that are borrowed from Latin are usually fit into the grammatical structure of the borrowing language (not always though). In English, "forums" is much more common than "fora" because in English one usually adds an "s" to the singular form to make it plural.

[HanibalII]

So what you're saying, is that because we speak English, 'fora' is not the correct word to use?

Cheers

[Chicken Sandwich]

So what you're saying, is that because we speak English, 'fora' is not the correct word to use?

Cheers

No, I didn't say that. "Fora" and "forums" are both possible, but "forums" is much more common.