In Germany “sierra” was also adopted.
Here the plural is: “Sierras”
e.g.:
Es ist heiß in der Sierra Nevada.
It is hot in the Sierra Nevada.
Die Sierras in der Welt haben eine spezielle Flora.
The sierras in the world have a special flora.
73 Armin
Saying “sierras” is a minor sin compared to:
Sierra Leone - Wikipedia → Geography 
One of my (many) pet hates
Well until relatively recently, on this side of the pond hams had aerials which is what I still prefer to call them!
Yes, I have aerials. My wife has antennae for detecting incoming radio equipment 
Don’t Americans have antennas and the British have aerials?
Sweet baby Jesus. How could I have forgotten than hams will normally ignore the premise of an argument and point out some minutiae that is completely irrelevant.
But minutiae is a nice example of a loan word (from Latin) that correctly maintains its Latin plural. Meriam-Webster has good description that it arrived in 18thC English meaning “trifles” or “details”. Its singular is minutia which means “smallness”. As it is used as in the same way as its Latin origin, English maintains the Latin rules for making a plural. Which contrasts nicely with antennas. Our Roman colleagues (and what have they ever done for us?) did not have any apparatus for launching and capturing electromagnetic waves so the word, when borrowed/stolen by English follows English rules for how it is pluralised. It is left as an exercise for the reader to find out why antenna was used for aerial and why English uses an adjective as a noun for an antenna.
I wasn’t attempting to twist your melons.
Furthermore, it wasn’t irrelevant. It was another example of the English language and its’ variations.
Marconi had antennas as did Heinrich Herz. If it’s good enough for them it should be good enough for anyone but being British we had to be different. Much like French made up words to replace common English computing terms or the BBC having “senders” rather than short wave transmitters. Or IBM never booting a mainframe but performing an IPL.
I think antennas are things that stick out of an insect’s head, whereas “aerial” is an abbreviation of “aerial wire”, meaning a wire that is up in the air somewhat.
So really, we have aerial antennas.
I love this topic, and your writing style. And all the comments so far, before mine.
73,
Andy, N4LAG
Eric,
You have stirred the pot and spurred an interesting series of posts. How might my 9th grade English teacher have opined? She was wicked smaht. (Good Will Hunting, 1997)
I keep trying to find an appropriate pun. All I can think of so far is “old saw”. Seems appropriate, hi!
I imagine many use the plural of sierra to refer to “those” mountains rather than “that” mountain range.
During my eleven years in Mexico I never heard anyone refer to Las Sierras de Picacho, however.
What peeves me is the steady incursion of the word “like” in places it does not belong, as in every other word. When I hear it on the radio emanating from the mouths of broadcasters and ESL speakers alike (no pun intended) I worry.
But then I go activate a summit and And the world’s alright with me. (Thank you, Bill Withers!)
73,
David N6AN
If we get too serious about it, this discussion thread will become “Sierragate”, another stupid thing that is accepted in our USA type of English.
73 or maybe for the purpose of this thread…73s
Carl WB0CFF
Hi folks,
sierra in spanish lenguage has two meanigs, one for a tool to cut the wood or metal, saw. Another meaning is a group of mountains alingments, “sierra de Gredos” near Madrid “Sierra Nevada” near Granada.
Both the sierra for mountains and the sierra for tool (saw) is a singuar word, plural is sierras, for ejamples: I owned two saws: Yo tengo dos sierras. Or I ran both sierras, yo he recorrido ambas sierras.
Sorry for my poor english, but I am spanish native and glad to resolve the dude
Thank you for responding Jon. That makes sense . I posed the question wrong. I see that the word sierra is singular.
My problem is when people use the plural incorrectly like when they visit Yosemite and say “I was in the sierras.”
In fact the town of Clovis in California’s Central Valley has enshrined this goof:
David: You are, like, a funny man.
I was once recording a local band at a party and one of the party goers was heard to comment: “Wow, it’s like, you know, like, I don’t know, you know?” The packing peanuts of comments.
Yesterday’s adventure in The Land of Enchantment:
Hi Eric.
Depends on the context.
For example, in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina there are two well-differentiated mountain formations, the Tandilia System and the Ventania System.
The Tandilia System is the oldest and most extensive and is made up of several mountain groups (Sierras). For this reason, the Tandilia System is called ¨Sierras de Tandil¨
On the other hand, the Ventania System is made up of a single mountainous block (Sierra) and that is why this place is called ¨Sierra de la Ventana¨
For this reason, if the place is formed by several mountainous blocks it is called ¨Sierras¨ and if it is a single block ¨Sierra¨
Takeo JP3PPL
Takeo, that makes sense to me and scores a zero on my cringe-o-meter.
I’m pragmatic about this sort of issue. As I see it, languages change, they accrete borrow words, they change usages, they coin slang and slang becomes established, and they tend to streamlining. This is healthy, the behavior of a living language, the rights and wrongs of language are not fixed (unless you are French! 
) but a matter of acceptance by those speaking the language. What purists reject one year might be accepted the next and obsolete the year after.
True Brian. That concept can be applied elsewhere too. I think a lot of conservationists have an unrealistic notion of nature as this static thing frozen in time. You hear talk of “invasive species” when virtually every living thing was a invasive species at one time or another. That’s not to say that we will all suffer from mass extinctions or decreasing bio-diversity, but nature is such a large open system that it is hard to encompass all the variables and foresee what is really happening.
Another country heard from
Eric KG6MZS
