Thank you, Powers! That was grating on me, was going to say the same thing. Englitch she be hard.
Starting at minute 11 he talks about this.
@lark: Thanks to that video, my new word of the day is “perspicuous”, ironically meaning “easy to understand”.
I didn’t watch the whole video, so I don’t know whether he covered split infinitives, a rule which is thought to trace to the fact that Latin doesn’t allow this — because in Latin, the infinitive is all one word: “ire” in Latin becomes “to go” in English. In Star Trek, this rule was famously broken as “to boldly go where no man has gone before”.
Doesn’t sound nearly as iconic if phrased as “to go boldly where no man has gone before”.
The more recent Star Treks use “to go boldly where no one has gone before”.
I suppose this would be “nuns have gone before.”
I’ve not heard anyone say “to go boldly” in Star Trek.
Also, larK, that video addresses “none”, not “neither”. I’m pretty sure “neither”, being short for “not either”, is unambiguously singular.
Yeah, it wasn’t exactly on point, but because I’d just watched it within the last week, when this came up here, I was all like, “wait, wait, I just heard about this!”, but apparently not quite. But the arguments against the prescriptavism hold. In the end, the only way to test if something is “grammatical” or not is to ask native speakers if it sounds weird. To that end, I am a native speaker, and “neither of us are” doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Robert is a major Star Trek fan – any version of same. We watch the new series and reruns of the old series (seriess for plural?).
He has all that are available for which are appropriate in time – Beta, VHS, DVD and Bluray – movies and series. He never used to be a “major” fan, but at some point during the Covid years he has become one.
I do need to mention that back in the 1970s we met, separately, both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
The college we went to had a program with Shatner speaking . Being how we are – always the last to leave – we and the two friends we were with, were still there after Shatner finished. We sat and spoke with him for maybe half an hour (maybe more – memory not the same as it was around 50 years ago and walked out with him.
A couple of years later we went with some friends to see a show at a local professional level theater – Fiddler on the Roof and the star was Zero Mostel. Being annoying people we always wait after a professional level show (Broadway included) for the actors to come out and get autographs from them. Zero Mostel walked out the stage door after the show with someone – Leonard Nimoy – apparently they were friends. As often happens with an older performer, Zero had us come to his car so he could sit down. We all spoke with them for awhile and then got autographs from both of them. One friend was a MAJOR SPOCK FAN! He had been standing back and I figured he was too overcome to come and talk with Nimoy. As they got into the limo to leave I found he did not know who it was. He asked who it was with Zero, and when we told him he went running after the limo as it left yelling “SPOCK”. He did not catch up with them.
Meryl asks: (seriess for plural?).
Interesting question, though the answer is “no, it’s just series, the same as the singular”.
An interesting side-phenomenon is people back-creating new forms for a singular. With this word you sometimes hear a serie, and similarly one specie. (I’m putting in an article to make it clear these are meant to be count nouns. There is a probably unrelated mass noun specie.)
An interesting, if somewhat technical, case is the noun vertex, which mostly in mathematical senses has the plural vertices, pronounced / ˈvɜr təˌsiz / (IPA) or [vur-tuh-seez] (dictionary convention). Then, a student who has only encountered vertices in lectures may in homework or an exam write verticies. Then further, if they haven’t picked up vertex as the singular, may create verticie or verticy as a singular to go with verticies.
And don’t forget “on-premise[s]”, which I hear practically daily! Makes “on-prem” MUCH preferable, as at least it’s not wrong.
Another non-plural is “alms”, which is another mass noun, so it’s unclear that it’s not a plural.
There has been minor finger-wagging about kudos, which most Americans understand as a plural, and pronounce accordingly; and some will form a singular kudo to indicate mild congratulation!
And then there are those who point to its origin as a Greek import, and say it is a non-count noun meaning “honor, glory, acclaim”. Dictionary dot com puts this usage first, and shows the optional pronunciations thus: / ˈku doʊz, -doʊs, -dɒs, ˈkyu- / (IPA) or [koo-dohz, -dohs, -dos, kyoo-] (dictionary conventions) — I doubt they mean that all six combinations are common. When I hear people urging that this is the only proper usage, they tend to pronounce it with the third choice shown for the second syllable. It’s the final -s replacing -z that makes this sound distinctive, as much as the vowel.
A lot of things about Ancient Greek are confusing to English speakers, and I won’t even get into how modern Greeks shake their head from side to side for “yes” and nod quickly upward for “no”. Ancient Greek had about eighteen forms of the definite article, taking into account gender, number and case. Masculine singular nominative sounds like “ho”, feminine singular nominative like “hey”, and neuter singular nominative like “toe”.
Masculine plural nominative is “hoi”. “The many” is “hoi polloi”. That’s “the many” as opposed to “the aristocrats” (the few, hoi oligoi as in oligarchy), i.e. the common people. When you say “the hoi polloi” you are saying “the the many.” But if you want to say “Democracy is popular with the many”, that’s a different case: tous pollous. But the rules for prepositions are so weird that they are better left to the Greeks.
Thank you all! :-)
Mark in Boston –
Interesting – I always though “Hoi polloi” meant the upper crust sort of people or alternately those who pretended to be such! Glad to know what is the correct meaning.
Comics I Don't Understand 
“Neither of us is,” dang it.
Thank you, Powers! That was grating on me, was going to say the same thing. Englitch she be hard.
Starting at minute 11 he talks about this.
@lark: Thanks to that video, my new word of the day is “perspicuous”, ironically meaning “easy to understand”.
I didn’t watch the whole video, so I don’t know whether he covered split infinitives, a rule which is thought to trace to the fact that Latin doesn’t allow this — because in Latin, the infinitive is all one word: “ire” in Latin becomes “to go” in English. In Star Trek, this rule was famously broken as “to boldly go where no man has gone before”.
Doesn’t sound nearly as iconic if phrased as “to go boldly where no man has gone before”.
The more recent Star Treks use “to go boldly where no one has gone before”.
I suppose this would be “nuns have gone before.”
I’ve not heard anyone say “to go boldly” in Star Trek.
Also, larK, that video addresses “none”, not “neither”. I’m pretty sure “neither”, being short for “not either”, is unambiguously singular.
Yeah, it wasn’t exactly on point, but because I’d just watched it within the last week, when this came up here, I was all like, “wait, wait, I just heard about this!”, but apparently not quite. But the arguments against the prescriptavism hold. In the end, the only way to test if something is “grammatical” or not is to ask native speakers if it sounds weird. To that end, I am a native speaker, and “neither of us are” doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Robert is a major Star Trek fan – any version of same. We watch the new series and reruns of the old series (seriess for plural?).
He has all that are available for which are appropriate in time – Beta, VHS, DVD and Bluray – movies and series. He never used to be a “major” fan, but at some point during the Covid years he has become one.
I do need to mention that back in the 1970s we met, separately, both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
The college we went to had a program with Shatner speaking . Being how we are – always the last to leave – we and the two friends we were with, were still there after Shatner finished. We sat and spoke with him for maybe half an hour (maybe more – memory not the same as it was around 50 years ago and walked out with him.
A couple of years later we went with some friends to see a show at a local professional level theater – Fiddler on the Roof and the star was Zero Mostel. Being annoying people we always wait after a professional level show (Broadway included) for the actors to come out and get autographs from them. Zero Mostel walked out the stage door after the show with someone – Leonard Nimoy – apparently they were friends. As often happens with an older performer, Zero had us come to his car so he could sit down. We all spoke with them for awhile and then got autographs from both of them. One friend was a MAJOR SPOCK FAN! He had been standing back and I figured he was too overcome to come and talk with Nimoy. As they got into the limo to leave I found he did not know who it was. He asked who it was with Zero, and when we told him he went running after the limo as it left yelling “SPOCK”. He did not catch up with them.
Meryl asks: (seriess for plural?).
Interesting question, though the answer is “no, it’s just series, the same as the singular”.
An interesting side-phenomenon is people back-creating new forms for a singular. With this word you sometimes hear a serie, and similarly one specie. (I’m putting in an article to make it clear these are meant to be count nouns. There is a probably unrelated mass noun specie.)
An interesting, if somewhat technical, case is the noun vertex, which mostly in mathematical senses has the plural vertices, pronounced / ˈvɜr təˌsiz / (IPA) or [vur-tuh-seez] (dictionary convention). Then, a student who has only encountered vertices in lectures may in homework or an exam write verticies. Then further, if they haven’t picked up vertex as the singular, may create verticie or verticy as a singular to go with verticies.
And don’t forget “on-premise[s]”, which I hear practically daily! Makes “on-prem” MUCH preferable, as at least it’s not wrong.
Another non-plural is “alms”, which is another mass noun, so it’s unclear that it’s not a plural.
There has been minor finger-wagging about kudos, which most Americans understand as a plural, and pronounce accordingly; and some will form a singular kudo to indicate mild congratulation!
And then there are those who point to its origin as a Greek import, and say it is a non-count noun meaning “honor, glory, acclaim”. Dictionary dot com puts this usage first, and shows the optional pronunciations thus: / ˈku doʊz, -doʊs, -dɒs, ˈkyu- / (IPA) or [koo-dohz, -dohs, -dos, kyoo-] (dictionary conventions) — I doubt they mean that all six combinations are common. When I hear people urging that this is the only proper usage, they tend to pronounce it with the third choice shown for the second syllable. It’s the final -s replacing -z that makes this sound distinctive, as much as the vowel.
A lot of things about Ancient Greek are confusing to English speakers, and I won’t even get into how modern Greeks shake their head from side to side for “yes” and nod quickly upward for “no”. Ancient Greek had about eighteen forms of the definite article, taking into account gender, number and case. Masculine singular nominative sounds like “ho”, feminine singular nominative like “hey”, and neuter singular nominative like “toe”.
Masculine plural nominative is “hoi”. “The many” is “hoi polloi”. That’s “the many” as opposed to “the aristocrats” (the few, hoi oligoi as in oligarchy), i.e. the common people. When you say “the hoi polloi” you are saying “the the many.” But if you want to say “Democracy is popular with the many”, that’s a different case: tous pollous. But the rules for prepositions are so weird that they are better left to the Greeks.
Thank you all! :-)
Mark in Boston –
Interesting – I always though “Hoi polloi” meant the upper crust sort of people or alternately those who pretended to be such! Glad to know what is the correct meaning.