Accepted Plural Form of ‘Hijab’ – Grammatical Number and Loanwords

grammatical-numberirregularloanwordstranslation

Although hijab is not an English word, it is commonly used in English to describe the head scarf worn by many Moslem women.

I was pretty sure I had just heard Christiane Amanpour of CNN call the plural "hijub", and that made me go to look up the correct plural.

There seems to be a disagreement among different sources.

WordForum calls the plural hujub (singular hijab)

Wikionary says it is hijabs.

In a case like this, where the original language has a plural different from a usage in English, which should be used? [I am aware of the precedents set by Greek plurals, and I would like to side-step all that.]

Best Answer

If we look at usage, according to Ngram hijabs is the more common form.

"English has borrowed words from nearly every language with which it has come into contact, and particularly for nouns from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French, it has often borrowed their foreign plurals as well. But when loan words cease to seem 'foreign,' and if their frequency of use in English increases, they very often drop the foreign plural in favor of a regular English -s. Thus at any given time we can find some loan words in divided usage, with both the foreign plural (e.g., indices) and the regular English plural (e.g., indexes) in Standard use. And occasionally we’ll find a semantic distinction between the two acceptable forms, as with the awe-inspiring Hebrew cherubim and the chubby English cherubs."

(Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press, 1993)

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