>I figure the jury's (sic!) still out on this one. In British English, which is mostly taught in Europe, we learn that Latin nouns keep their Latin plurals, hence cactus-cacti, index-indices, matrix-matrices. I've heard more and more exceptions to this lately (which accidentally coincides with my stay in the Sta(y)tes).
>
>> And "its", without apostrophe, is the possessive form - a real killer. The "exception that proves the rule", as we like to say. Figure that one out!
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>I knew I had missed one more killing example in my list of overloaded suffix/ces.
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>As an example to the opposite, I'll try to list a few sufficxes ( :) ) from my language, and I'm pretty sure a similar set exists in most Slavic languages, which are used to create a noun from a verb or another noun:
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>-ište - place where; klizalište (klizati se - to skate) - skate rink
>-ona, -onica - room where it is done: učionica (učiti - to learn) - classroom
>-ik, -nik - one who is subject to, or of an operation; mučenik (mučiti - to torture) - martyr; radnik (raditi - to work) - worker
>-lac - same, but never passive - ranoranilac (rano - early, raniti - get up early) earlyriser
>-telj - another strictly active - učitelj (učiti- to learn) - teacher
>-ač, -aš - another strictly active, person or tool - skijaš (skijati se - to ski) - skier; grejač (grejati - to heat [something]) - heater
>-lo, -alo, -ilo - tool suffix - merilo (meriti - to measure) - criterion, measurement tool
>-lica - same but gives a feminine noun - grejalica - space heater
>
>Add there a few more to create diminutives, few more for augmentatives, and a dozen more I can't remember... and you'll see why there's very rarely any confusion between a mower (machine - that's "kosilica") and a mower (person - that's "kosac"), a best seller (book) and a best seller (successful tradesperson), etc etc.
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>Um... back to English. It's so much easier to make fun with :).

Dragan,

Don't we lucky that English doesn't have all of that. :)