Episode: 3525
Title: HPR3525: Battling with English - part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3525/hpr3525.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 00:58:25

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3525 for Friday 4th of February 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Pat Ling with English Part 4, It is hosted by Dave Morris and
is about 15 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The server is, some confusion with English laurels, strange language changes.
Hello everybody, this is Dave Morris and welcome to Haka Public Radio.
So today's show is number four in a series which is called, Pat Ling with English.
I talk about things to do with spelling and grammar and stuff like that.
And this time I'm looking at some words that have singular and plural forms which are very
different and a bit unusual too and they lead to confusion. As a follow-up, although I think it
might take a fair bit of time on the first one, but another subject that I want to just touch on
is a couple of ways in which English is evolving. And I think there some of them are a bit strange
and a bit senseless actually. In other words, I don't approve, but you see what you think.
Just on a personal note, I look in through the notes I put together for this show,
I had started in 2019, but unfortunately COVID, people messed up my productivity for the next two
years, which is ridiculous when you think about it. But I'm hoping that I can now get back into
being more productive again. So let's see how we go. You might never hear from me again, of course.
Right, let's start. We're looking first at nouns that end in IS. And these words are usually
derived from Greek. So they don't conform to the usual pattern of writing singles and plurals.
I made a little table of a few and I've shown the singular form, the plural form,
and then listed a number of common mistakes. Start with thesis. That's a thing, a sort of paper
that you write. It's part of your education probably. Thesis is the singular. The plural is
Thesis, T-H-E-S-E-S. What you often see, what I often see, because I'm alert to these things,
is the word thesis says, in other words, take thesis, put E-S on the end of it, because
it's quite common to do that in English, pluralisation, but it's not right. The other one I've seen,
surprisingly often, is one where people get confused with plurals and possessives,
where they put thesis with an apostrophe on the end of it. That doesn't make it a plural at all.
Doesn't make it anything real. And the table I've marked the mistakes with them,
they're in italics, and I've put little crosses beside them just to remind you that those are wrong.
The other one I hear a lot of listening to podcasts and stuff, is the word parenthesis,
the round brackets that you use in often, I mean, it's because people are talking about programming,
languages and stuff, parenthesis is the singular. So you have, often you have an open bracket and
a closed bracket, and each one is a parenthesis. If you want to refer to the two of them,
the open and the close, then the word is parenthesis, ends in T-H-E-S-E-S, parenthesis. Now what
I've heard some people doing is assuming that parenthesis with a plural, but then they take off the
S from the end of it and say, okay, the singular must be parenthesis, just with no S on the end.
That's not the way these plurals work. Parenthesis, parenthesis, things to remember. The other thing
that I see is people using parenthesis for both the singular and plural. So this expression is
enclosed in parenthesis. No, parenthesis, because it's one at the beginning, one at the end. So yeah,
parenthesis, I suppose it's not that useful a term in programming languages, because they usually
paired. So it is confusing. I understand it is confusing, but hopefully some of this chitchat will
help you remember these things. Next one is crisis. Again, conforms to the singular plural pattern,
crisis and crises. You see people writing crisis says, and nemesis, and nemesis, and again,
nemesis says is often used as the plural. One I heard recently was difficulty between
the singular axis and the plural axes. Now, it's again like parenthesis. Some people mistake
the word axes. Well, they don't mistake it. They take it as the plural, which it is, but then they
assume that to make it singular, you take the S off the end. So it's axi, but that spells ax.
And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about an axis. Yeah, I know English is
confusing. If you're a learner of English, and it's a second or third language or something,
then these things are really going to annoy you, I think. But yeah, I've often given students advice
when I worked in university. Students who hadn't got English as a first language, and they were
struggling with some of these things. So yeah, just to summarize, then a mistake that's often made
is that people were ES on the end of a singular form to make the plural, or so if thesis says.
But the rule is that the IS at the end is replaced by ES. And the thing about parenthesis must have
a singular form, parenthesis is that I heard that so many times lately. Once you hear it,
well, if you have a pedantic mind like mine, and once you hear it, you're going to keep on
detecting it. And the person I noticed with the Axis Axi error was somebody on our YouTube
video, and they were talking about I think 3D printing emails. Okay, so let's leave that one. One more.
I'm not going to do too many of these because they can be overwhelming. So these are nouns that end
in an A, and these are so-called irregular plural, which sometimes end with A-E. In fact, usually
formally end with A-E. But I think the world of English speakers have started to hate that stuff
and try to move away from it. But I thought it was worth raising it at least. I was taught to use
the A-E form, which we'll look at in a minute. So in my mind, that is right, and everything else is
wrong. But I'm a bit of an absolutist and it comes these things so be flexible, I guess, but
but not too flexible. Anyway, I've got a list here, another table, where I've shown the plurals,
but I've shown an irregular form, or at least a less formal form, let's say, but they are used
in other contexts. So let's look at these. There's a few more this time. And Tenna,
think of you to stick on your radio, or if you're an insect, you'd have one too, probably.
And Tenna is end in an A, but if you want to speak about multiple and Ten-E, then it ends in A-E.
Some people use the word and Tenna's, which has become more acceptable. But if you were writing
a biological paper or something, and we'll be tied you for writing and Tenna's,
somebody's going to reject it on that basis, I would guess. The common mistake is to
use and Tenna as a plural. This insect has two and Tenna. No, and Ten-E, or and Tenna's, if you must.
Again, with Alga, which is the biological name for seaweed and other green things going to see,
some unicellular, some much bigger. Plurals, Algi, A-O-G-A-E, or Algis, which is interesting.
That sounds seems to be the worst of both worlds, actually, though. Not Algas, but Algis. And again,
Alga is not a plural, so you can't say this bucket of Alga. What you could say,
that would be wrong. I'll go through these a little bit quicker because you probably don't want
me to dwell on them too much. Formular, the plural is formulae, but you do find formulas as well.
Formular is not a plural. Lava, the plural is larvae, but lava as L-A-R-V-A-S is also found.
I'm not sure whether it's acceptable. Acceptable to me is probably what I mean. Nebula,
usually here in astronomy circles, the plural is nebulae. Nebulaes is not an accepted form,
according to all the sources I've found, anyway. A nebula is not a plural. I do hear astronomers
talking about the such and such nebulae, and then they drop into, oh, the thing in the thing,
nebulaes, I've heard that, or nebula, more commonly. So they seem to be confused, but what's
a singular in the plural? That's really the point of this podcast. Nova, which again is an
astronomical word, though it does have other meanings. Nova is singular, no V is the plural,
but you also see novas, and novas should never be used as a plural. Vertibra, given away my biological
roots, you know, I'm afraid plural is vertebrae, and vertebras is, you will come across, but vertebra
is not a plural. Last one, another biological one, pupa, the thing that the bottom of the lower
of moth makes before it turns into bottom of the lower moth from a caterpillar, is as plural of pupa,
AE, and pupas is also found, but pupa is never a plural. So there are more plurals that are
confusing, but I'm going to stop there. But as a biology student, I encountered words like
verbosis, which is a Greek drug word, meaning a feeding tube, such as an insect moth part,
or an elephant's trunk, though I've not heard many people talk about elephant's trunks as
verbosis. It's a verbosis. We were taught that the plural was verbosides. So that's a nice complicated
one, but just to warn you that there's some other nasty things out there. But nowadays people say
verbosis is, sounds horrible, but there you go. So that's enough of that for the moment. So here's
me on the subject of language evolution, and I'm saying here that I'm being somewhat ancient,
and stuck in my ways, probably I don't approve of these. See what you think. First one I noticed
some number of years ago is the use of ease in a sentence, so it is repeated. Now it's acceptable
to do that. If the sentence consists of a couple of phrases like, the question is, comma,
is it snowing? Well, that's fine. You've got two eases there, but the one's just saying that
here's a question, and this is what it is, and the question is, is it snowing? So the first
is, ends the phrase, and the second starts the question. But you do find people saying things
like, the problem is that it's snowing, and you don't find it in written form. It's not in my experience,
but it's very common in speech on mainly on TV and radio in my experience. I don't know anybody
personally who does that, but maybe it's a Britishism that's, no, it's not, and I've heard it in
American podcasts and stuff as well. I do recall people writing to the BBC in the earlier times,
and this appeared saying why there was doubling of the word is in stuff, and the response came back,
oh yeah, the guy was just hesitating, he wasn't sure what to say next, which happens, you know,
we do say things with a hesitation stopping for a thought there. But I don't think that was
the right reply, because there's everywhere, no. It can't be that sort of verbal tick in all cases.
Second one is the expression, honing in, H-O-N-I-N-G. So I think this expression, and I've found
other people who agree with this, that this is a mishearing or mispronunciation of the phrase,
honing in, honing in. I'm not sure if this is, I mentioned here, a mon degree, where this is where
people hear a thing and misunderstand what's being said, which he calls it, a mishearing or misinterpretation
of a phrase in a way that gives it new meaning. And if you follow the mon degree link in the notes here,
you'll find some wonderful things. Desmond Decker and the Aces song,
Mi Israelite, was taken by many people to be, or at least there's a joke about it,
sounding like Mi ears are a light, which I find funny. There was even a TV ad in the UK
using that joke. Anyway, I think mishearing stuff is a bit, I'm not sure I agree with it,
it seems a poor excuse, because honing H-O-N-I means to sharpen or narrow to a point, and that's fine,
that's great. But I don't find the use in context where honing was the original, because otherwise
we're going to have things like honing missiles. They were called honing missiles, the ones that
you pointed them in direction, and I said go there, now, program to go to a place, and they went
there, they honed in on that place. But honing, what's that, what's sharpening got to do with
missiles? And they'll also be honing pigeons, originally they were honing pigeons, because they,
when you let them go, it was a sport, it probably still is in the UK. You have honing pigeons,
you take them out to some remote place, and then let them out, and then they find the way home,
and there's a race between different competitors, for which pigeon returns home first,
wherever they live. These are pet pigeons, or, you know, kept by pigeon fanciers, as they call them.
But honing, what? And the other thing is you'd find, instead of honing in, well, I've got an example
in a minute, I think, then you'd be using sharpening in, so it means that honing, honing, and sharpening
would be synonyms, if that was made any sense. So there would be expressions such as the detective
was sharpening in on the criminal, in other words, well, as an alternative to honing in on the criminal.
So in such a world, I say, I believe in my blunt chisels out on the birdtabre, in the hopes of
honing pigeons pass by and sharpen them. On that note, or terrible joke, I'll leave it. Anyway,
I hope you found that interesting or useful, or even irritating. Let me know what you think,
and catch you next time. Okay, bye!
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