By Richard Firsten
Retired ESOL Teacher, Teacher-Trainer, Columnist, Author

In “Is it a Change ― or is it a Goof?” I dealt with the topic of recognizing whether some items are actual changes in the language or just mistakes made by people who don’t know any better. I think this topic merits an additional look, and I hope you do, too.

Just to put some more perspective on this issue, let’s showcase the words apron and umpire. If you had wanted to look those words up in a dictionary back, say, in 1200 (imagining that such a thing as a dictionary existed at that time), you wouldn’t have found them listed under a and u respectively. They would have been listed under n. “Huh?” you say. Yep, both of them would have been under n. That’s because something really odd ― but also funny ― happened to those words. When people speaking Middle English said those nouns with the indefinite article, after enough time had passed, the /n/, which was the first sound of those two nouns, migrated over to the indefinite article, so a napron became an apron, and a numpire (originally numpere) became an umpire. Ain’t that a linguistic kick in the head! And that’s the way those words changed. From a funny mistake said often enough, napron and numpire got transformed and became real lexical changes. That’s accumulation of error at work, all right!

And it keeps happening. A rather recent example is livid. Its original meaning is “gray,” or “ashen” in color. The original expression was livid with anger or livid with rage. In other words, if you felt that angry, your color would turn something like ashen. Well, you can see what happened without my telling you: the “… with anger” or “… with rage” parts got dropped, and livid has come to mean “very angry” or “furious.” And that’s okay. That’s what happens to language.

But here’s something that drives me slightly nuts. Almost everybody now says the media is rather than the media are. I talked about this in my first piece on this topic, when English speakers don’t recognize any longer that the Latin and Greek neuter –a ending is really a plural. Well, so be it. If English speakers want to make that an acceptable change rather than just a goof, okay. But I think that if it’s a real change, it should be consistent whenever used ― and in this case, it isn’t. Read the following and think about whether or not you feel comfortable with it:

The horrendous earthquake that hit southwestern China and the terrible cyclone that hit Myanmar were well covered by television, but were they covered just as well by another media like radio?

“Another media.” Are you comfortable with that? Wouldn’t you probably opt for another medium? If your answer is yes, then we’ve got a troublesome inconsistency. On the one hand, you may go along with employing media as a singular collective noun (the media is), but on the other hand, you may feel you should say another medium instead of another media. That’s not consistent. Maybe this is a change that’s still in the process of taking place. Maybe that can explain the inconsistency.

And if that isn’t enough to question how this word is used, even though with a completely different definition, read the following sentence, which I copied down verbatim from a television commercial for a language-teaching program ― of all things ― called “Rosetta Stone.” This is the testimony given during the commercial by a satisfied customer: “I’ve used a lot of different mediums to learn a language, but …” Oh, my goodness! “A lot of different mediums”? Before I freaked out altogether, I ran to different dictionaries to check this out. Most said that when the meaning is a means of communicating or transmitting information, the “usual” plural is media. One dictionary, however, listed an alternative plural form as mediums. So I guess mediums isn’t used anymore just to mean people who claim to communicate with the dead. I just keep shaking my head more and more when I come up against things like this. Is a real change going on? Is that why one dictionary I looked at mentioned that media is still the preferred plural form, but that mediums is okay, too? Maybe the jury’s still out on this one. But being the kind of conservative speaker I am, I’ll stick with television is a medium and television and radio are media. And as far as I’m concerned, Alison Dubois, who can see dead people, is a medium, and she suspects that her daughters are mediums, too!

So let me end by asking you how you’d categorize the following. Do you see them as changes, or do you see them as goofs? I’ll let you know what I think later, so do feel free to comment. And what do you think about this whole issue? Let me know.

1. I think I’ll lay down for half an hour. Wake me up at 6.
2. This paint goes on real easy. / She does her work quicker than most of my employees.
3. If he didn’t move away from that tree, he would have been killed when the lightning struck.
4. “Do you know where’s the main office?” “Sorry, I’m not sure where the office is at.”
5. We utilize those logs in the fireplace during the winter to make the living room cozier.

By Richard Firsten
Retired ESOL Teacher, Teacher-Trainer, Columnist, Author

Ever feel conflicted about what is and isn’t considered “acceptable” in English? I know I do. (Guess what. I just used an adjective, conflicted, which wasn’t considered “a real word” some years back.) So we sometimes find ourselves in this awful gray area of language, which has got to be the most uncomfortable place for an English teacher to be. Do we teach this word is acceptable? Do we teach that word is unacceptable? Do we just shrug our shoulders, sigh, and leave it up to somebody else to decide? And if we go for that third choice, who’s that “somebody” supposed to be?

If you want to get some perspective on this issue, here’s a term for you: an accumulation of error. It’s a term used as a way of accounting for what the language has done with particular words or phrases over the centuries. If an error is made often enough and by enough people, it finally stops being an error and becomes acceptable. And going along hand in hand with this is the concept that if a word is a high-frequency item, chances are it won’t change much over the centuries. A case in point is high-frequency irregular verbs such as go, eat, and see. We use them so often that there’s no confusion about their past tense (went, ate, saw) or past participle forms (gone, eaten, seen) in standard English. But verbs that aren’t used quite so often have either gone through a complete transition from being irregular to regular (e.g., the past of help used to be halp; now it’s helped) or they’re in transition at this time (e.g., the past of dive is now dove or dived).

I have to ask myself, though, are some of the things I hear or read real changes caused by accumulation of error combined with low-frequency items, or are they just goofs that people make because they don’t know any better?

One example of this is a bunch of nouns we got from Latin or Greek. Those two languages have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In Greek the ending on a neuter noun is –on in the singular and –a in the plural. With Latin neuter nouns the endings are –um in the singular and –a in the plural. So that’s why the Greek loan words phenomenon and criterion are phenomena and criteria in the plural, and that’s why the Latin words are datum and bacterium in the singular and data and bacteria in the plural.

The problem is, how many English speakers know this anymore? Not too many, if you ask me. And because there’s this gap in their linguistic awareness, they view data and bacteria as singular nouns rather than plural.

Funny how that problem never occurs with masculine singular words like octopus and cactus. For some reason, English speakers always recognize them as singular nouns. The only problem that came up was putting them in the plural. Do we really want to use the Latin masculine plural and say octopi and cacti? Nah! Sounds uppity:

A: Hey, Clem, how’s about you and me go to the nursery and buy us some cacti for the front yard? They’ll do great in this drought.
B: Yep, sounds like a good idea, Myrtle. Bet they’ll look mighty nice!

No, I just can’t imagine Myrtle saying “cacti.” It’s going to be cactuses for her. And why not? We’ve been regularizing the plurals of loan words for quite some time, so it’s cactuses and octopuses and hippopotamuses for Myrtle. But at least she recognizes that it’s one cactus and two cactuses. Not so with those poor neuter plurals like data and bacteria.

Okay, I’ll make a confession, owing to the fact that I tend to be conservative in my use of language. I find it jarring to hear somebody like a doctor, nurse, or TV journalist say a bacteria instead of a bacterium. But that’s just me. In fact, not only has bacteria become accepted as a singular noun, but it’s also been pluralized by adding an –s, so some people actually say and write bacterias. Yikes! We’ve now got a plural on top of a plural. It’s a linguistic “two-fer”: two plural forms for the price of one! Well, is this a goof or is this a change? I don’t think the jury’s out on this one. I think it’s a change.

Oh! By the way, speaking of a word like phenomenon . . . I was watching an American TV game show called The Phenomenon. (It didn’t have a long run.) Anyway, the host of the show, a young man from the UK, actually kept saying “phenomenom.” The first time he said it, I thought I’d just heard him wrong. But he said it three or four more times during the show: “phenomenom.” Unbelievable! But do you know what I found really scary? The fact that nobody from the script writer to the cue card guy to the director to whoever else was involved with that show ever corrected him on it. That’s what I found really scary. Now that was a goof, not a change!

So here are a few goodies to ponder over. The question is, are they changes or are they goofs? I’ll leave it to you to decide. They’re some of my favorites because they bother me. (Remember, I told you I’m kind of conservative.) Anyway, I’d love to know what you think of them. Are they acceptable changes or are they goofs? Any others you can think of to add to my hit list will be appreciated. Just let me know.

• She’s an alumni of Duke University.
• He shouldn’t talk like that about John and I.
• “Do you mind if I sit here?” “Sure.”
• The police found teeth marks on the victim.
• The media isn’t reporting this accurately.
• They hung Saddam Hussein in 2007.

Now ponder, dear reader, ponder. I’ll have more to say on this subject at another time.

By Richard Firsten
Retired ESOL Teacher, Teacher-Trainer, Columnist, Author

I remember learning a term in college: reactionary. It meant somebody who reacts negatively and strongly to any social or political change. I think we can apply that term to language as well. I’m not a reactionary, but I suppose I’m a conservative when it comes to language. I find I have to push myself into accepting a change in the language that I don’t like or don’t want to stay as a permanent fixture. I usually don’t really accept the change; I just swallow hard and say something like, “Well, since so many educated native speakers now say that, it’s become ‘acceptable.’” It sometimes hurts to say that, especially if I’m gnashing my teeth, but I take a deep breath and do so. The thing is, I find myself saying that more and more often, and that tends to disturb me. I suppose I’ll have to get used to it, though; it’s the nature of language to change.

Here’s something that’s becoming “acceptable.” I can’t tell you how vividly I remember finding a big red mark an English teacher of mine had put through the word why in a sentence I’d written in a composition. That why was part of the phrase the reason why. When I questioned my teacher about it, she explained it was redundant. She reminded me that why means the same thing as the reason: He told me the reason he had done that. / He told me why he had done that. “You see?” she said smiling. “If we can substitute the reason with why, it shows you that they mean the very same thing, so using them together is a redundancy ― and it’s silly.” I’ve never forgotten that. My teacher really opened my eyes to the world of redundancies, which I spoke about in a previous piece on this blog. And you can bet the ranch that I’ve never said or written the reason why again.

Well, as the saying goes, “That was then; this is now.” I hear educated people say the reason why every single day, usually many times a day. I still cringe a little whenever I hear it ― a reflex action, you know ― but I’m going to develop a tick if I don’t stop cringing. Almost everybody says the reason why these days, so does that mean I have to say once again, “Well, since so many educated native speakers now say that, it’s become acceptable”? I suppose it does. (Can you hear me sighing?)

Here’s another example. I remember being taught that we should use each other when speaking about only two of something and one another when speaking about three or more. Come to think of it, I was taught the same grammar rule for between and among. Well, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard educated speakers throw that rule to the wind and use one another for just two people and use between for three or more. I just shake my head and wonder. I’ve found that even dictionaries and fairly recent grammar books now accept one another in place of each other. (I’m sighing again.) So can the same laissez-faire attitude towards between and among be far off? Probably not.

And what about less and the least vs. fewer and the fewest? Awhile back I was watching a hit TV show called The Biggest Loser. They had some trivia questions for the television audience, among which (not between which!) was, “Which of the following kinds of pie has the least calories?” Yes! They said “the least calories”! The writer who came up with that question thought it was fine. The graphic designer who mounted it on the screen thought it was fine. The narrator who did the voiceover thought it was fine. I guess the director thought it was fine. Everybody thought it was fine ― except me! At least, that’s the feeling I got. Well, if nobody thinks there’s a problem with it, who am I to decry that use? Do you see why I wonder if I’m just a conservative or a true reactionary? And I don’t want to touch on what I should do in the classroom with my ESOL students. No, no, don’t even go there! I still have nightmares over being forced to deal with explaining why it was okay to say two coffees when the lesson in our antiquated grammar book clearly said coffee was only an uncountable noun. Ugh!

So what’s your take on all of this? Are you an ultraliberal as far as these kinds of language change go? Or perhaps you’re a conservative, or even a reactionary. I’d really like to know if I’m all alone or if I have colleagues I can commiserate with. Tell me what changes you’ve noticed that you find either completely acceptable or you would like to see disappear from common usage. Talk to me!