Jenny, either pronunciation is correct. Fish, you beat me to the punch, but if it were my last name, I'd probably pluralize it as Fish.

Dyske, I think you may have misunderstood an important point from the very link you posted: "...I understood that the irregular verbs and nouns came from different linguistic systems within which they were perfectly regular..." Actually, no. they didn't come from different systems. They came from our system. They have always been a part of English as long as there has been English and before. Irregular verbs are the way they are because they are the oldest verb forms from our "original" proto-language. It's no accident the the most common and utile verbs are also the ones that are irregular (i.e., to be, to go, to have, to do, etc.). It's their very familiarity and commonality that allows them to retain their irregular forms through the generations.

Scyllacat, a link to the "smart guy's" explanation would have been infinitely more useful than simply putting a link to his site.

I would think either would work. Note that populated and populous don't mean exactly thie same thing. Any place that has inhabitants at all is populated. Populous means heavily populated. Since you already say third most, you don't need to say populous, but you certainly could if you wanted to emphasize the large number of people (just like saying: "the third most heavily populated ...") By the way, you shouldn't be using a hyphen. It's just "third most populated..." etc.

Tom, you said that you can understand it in situations where a thing is not binary. Well, most situations are not binary. The type of negation you describe softens the claim specifically because it generally does include the normally excluded middle. Saying not unfriendly instead of friendly may also include neutral feeling, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Not uncaring may mean that one may care, or not care at all, but isn't actually callous. Not dissimilar may mean not completely different, but not exactly the same either, etc., etc.

Underexageration: I'm so hungry I could eat a pony!

Oops, sorry. That's "Ordinally, which prime minister of India is Manmohan Singh?", "of" not "if".

While some comments are on the right track, I would suggest the somewhat simpler: "Ordinally, which prime minister if India is Manmohan Singh?" As mentioned above, cardinal is incorrect as it does not imply any information about order. Cardinal numbers are one, two, three; ordinal numbers are first, second, third.... Regarding the list of presidents in the US, cardinality simply refers to the total number of presidents, forty-four (possibly forty-three, as Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms?).

I wanted to suggest something about order of succession or sequence, but unfortunately, that would be incorrect as it already refers to the order in which other officers fill in if the president or prime minister leaves office. E.g., in the US, the Vice President, then Speaker of the House, etc., are next in the order of succession if the President can no longer serve.

For those of you running Windows XP (possibly other operating systems, too), if you go to "device manager" you will find that your mouse is listed under "Mice and other pointing devices". I guess that means that Microsoft prefers "mice".

I haven't actually heard this speech pattern in my area. I am curious. Do they only do it with a preceding "s" or is it with all other vowel or consonant combinations? I.e., I'm sleep, you're sleep, he would be sleep if..., etc.