Names of places and highland attire

[TheKiltedWonder]

Is it not Alumnus? I am an Alumnus of the University of St Andrews and they think it is.

You're an alumnus because you're male. The Plural is alumni. An alumna is a female, with alumnae as the plural. Luckily alumni and alumnae sound the same (from what I remember of Latin) so as long as you use the plural and are speaking there's no need to worry about spelling/gender preference.

[gilmore]

You're an alumnus because you're male. The Plural is alumni. An alumna is a female, with alumnae as the plural. Luckily alumni and alumnae sound the same (from what I remember of Latin) so as long as you use the plural and are speaking there's no need to worry about spelling/gender preference.

In Latin alumni is pronounced ah-loom-nee, and alumnae is pronounce ah-loom-neye (rhymes with eye,) but they are usually mispronounced the same way in English, as are vertebrae (usually mispronounced as ver-te-bray instead of ver-te breye) and funghi (usually mispronounced fun-guy instead of fun-ghee.)

[Galician]

In Latin alumni is pronounced ah-loom-nee, and alumnae is pronounce ah-loom-neye (rhymes with eye,) but they are usually mispronounced the same way in English, as are vertebrae (usually mispronounced as ver-te-bray instead of ver-te breye) and funghi (usually mispronounced fun-guy instead of fun-ghee.)

I beg to differ about the pronunciation of "alumnae" and "vertebrae." They are pronounced that way because that is the way "-ae" was pronounced in medieval Latin. It was only in the 19th century when English academics compared ancient Latin inscriptions to their Greek transciptions and theorized that they showed that a different pronunciation had been used by the ancient Romans than survived into the Middle Ages.

The "later" pronunciation is still that used for church Latin in Roman circles.