Plural of Assembly

Question

What is the correct plural of "assembly" in a German document?

I googled "assemblys" to validate the spelling. Google suggests: Did you mean "assemblies"? But the third search result is a link to the Microsoft MSDN where these guys use "Assemblys" (and I think they should know it).

As far as I know, the correct spelling is "assemblies", but I'm confused about the usage in the MSDN. So how should I write the plural of assembly in a German resume?

Edit: (upper- or lowercase?)
I use this word not at the beginning of a sentence, but my intention is to definitly write the first letter in uppercase (Assembly, not assembly). Everything else is looking strange for me in a German document. As the english dudes write their assembly in lowercase even in that quoted MSDN-Article (switched to english-USA), I prefer the German rule to write the first letter in uppercase. If I now use an englisch rule to let it end with "..ies", I'm going to mix up rules from different languages within a single word. Otherwise I can show that I'm aware of the rule building plurals in english. May be that writing it as "Assemblies" is at least looking "less faulty". Does anyone know?

Answer 1

If you use foreign words in a German sentence you have to use German rules (German grammar). The reason for this is very simple: If you are speaking German you don't need to know the grammar of foreign languages.

I give you some examples:

Pizza
"pizza" is an Italien word. The Italian plural is "pizze". (Notice, that "pizza" and "pizze" is written all lower-case according to italien rules.)

Wrong: Heute esse ich eine pizza und morgen esse ich zwei pizze.
Correct: Heute esse ich eine Pizza und morgen esse ich zwei Pizzas.
Also correct: Heute esse ich eine Pizza und morgen esse ich zwei Pizzen.

Kimono
"Kimono" is a japanese Word (着物). I have no clue what is it's plural in Japanese language. But I can use it in a german sentence without learning Japanese:

Heute trage ich einen Kimono.
Gestern sah ich fünf Kimonos in einem Geschäft.

Dame
"dame" is a french word. The french plural is "dames" but I don't need to know that if I talk about ladies ("dames"/"Damen") in German:

Wrong: Lisa ist eine echte dame. Ich bitte alle dames zum Tanz.
Correct: Lisa ist eine echte Dame. Ich bitte alle Damen zum Tanz.

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The same is true for words comming from English too:

Babysitter
"babysitter" is used in English both, for male and female babysitters. The english plural is "babysitters":

Wrong: Wir hatten schon drei verschiedene babysitters. Die aktuelle babysitter heißt Anna.
Correct: Wir hatten schon drei verschiedene Babysitterinnen. Die aktuelle Babysitterin heißt Anna.

Hobby
English singular: hobby. Englisch plural: hobbies. But when I talk about hobbies in a german sentence, I do not need to know anything about english grammar:

Wrong: Helmuts hobby ist Fernsehen. Andere hobbies hat er nicht.
Correct: Helmuts Hobby ist Fernsehen. Andere Hobbys hat er nicht.

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So, what is true for "Hobbys", "Babys", "Cowboys", "Teddys" and "Dummys" must be true for "Assemblys" too.

But it would be much better if you would use the German word "Baugruppe" instead.

Answer 2

You have the choice. The standard rule for the plural of nouns coming from foreign (modern) languages is to add -s, especially in the case of germanized English words ending with -y.

"Also" : Babys, Ladys, Assemblys (if you consider it a German word), and Pizzas, Espressos.

Note that Duden (German leading dictionnary editor) says so.

However, the classic rule of most european languages is to keep the original form : babies, bacteria, etc. It used to be also the rule in German, but not anymore, even if some newspapers use it because it's cool.

My recommendation : use the English plural form, in quotes or in italic to mark it as a foreign word. My personal rule in any language is to try to avoid mixed forms of foreign words if they aren't broadly accepted, or if they are badly adapted concepts or if they are ugly or useless (eg avoid the French mèle for email and write email or message électronique). I write a German word, or an English one, but no Germlish, Frenglish, or Sperman (badly choosed combination for Spanish words adapted in German).

If you read heise publications (German leading IT press editor) you can take their language practices as rules because they are very very careful and correct (as with any kind of standardization). And it's an exception because the German newspaper writers usually have very bad spelling and grammar.

upper-/lowercase : Writing "Assemblies" would definitely be false.

Answer 3

In this special case an "Assembly" is what Microsoft named their component of the .NET framework:

Assemblys sind die Bausteine von .NET Framework-Anwendungen ^{Microsoft DE}
Assemblies are the building blocks of .NET Framework applications ^{Microsoft US}

Therefore it is not a technical term used in the German language we are talking here. It is a proper noun adopted by Microsoft for their software component.

My advice would be to go with Yves and put it in quotes "Assembly", or pl. "Assemblys" (because Microsoft say its spelt like that - odd as it looks). In case we write to an audience that is not familiar with the .NET Framework we may also want to add this to our text like e.g. "Microsoft .NET Assemblys" to further clarify what we mean.

This also makes clear that we do not talk about other assemblies that would then need to be translated to be understood.