The plural is indeed Grands Prix. The source of the term is the Grand Prix
de Paris, which was a horse race held in the late 1800s. It's probably not
the usual French weirdness that makes Grands Prix the suitable
pluralization, but the inelegance of pluralizing any word that ends with X
by adding an S or ES. You sound like you've got a bilateral lisp. But French
grammar is so arcane that even serious french scholars don't really
understand it all. That's why diplomats love french--you can be subtly
insulting in french and no one will know.
As far as the commentary goes, anyone as over-exposed as those two were
would sooner or later become irritating and finally stupid. Not well done.
If it hadn't been for the lovely engine noise I would have turned the sound
off.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On Behalf
Of Doug Mitchell
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 8:05 AM
To: jrhill; FOT@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [FOT] F1 tomorrow??
And I remember a joke (probably from Playboy) that grand prix is both a
misspelling and a mis-pronunciation.
--- jrhill <jrhill@chorus.net> wrote:
> Rocky Entriken writes:
>
> > (post-race) -- I wouldn't have thought of Ralph
> Sheheen
> > and Derek Daly as amateurs, but Sheheen kept
> referring
> > to "grand prixs" (the plural of that French phrase
> is grands
> > prix) and Daly did nothing to enlighten him.
>
> True -- for traditionalist Europeans, longtime F1 fans and dedicated
> Road & Track readers, the plural is indeed "Grands Prix".
> For the rest of the world
> . . . not so much. I never did understand why the plural of "Great
> Prize"
> would be "Greats Prize", but then again I never took French.
>
> Wasn't it the folks at R&T who attempted to Americanize the term to
> "Great Prize" racing? I suspect that the prospect of having to say
> "Greats Prize"
> is what killed the effort.
>
> Jim Hill
>
>
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