Planar Speaker Asylum

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RE: that never happens

Posted by josh358 on September 10, 2012 at 09:37:49:
I don't think you could speak of one Tympano, people would think you'd had too much to drink. And if you used "Tympani" as the plural, that would elicit confusion as well.

Strictly speaking, each speaker is a timpani anyway, since the name refers to the tuned diaphragm segments by analogy to tuned drums. So maybe it does make sense to pluralize the plural.

Anyway, I suspect none of this applies to proper nouns, whatever their metaphoric intent. So if you had a "Mr. Oxen," you would refer to his family as "the Oxens."

In any case, no 'postrophe, "Tympani" is a proper noun, not an alphanumeric model designation.