I encountered this sentence in a collegiate alumni magazine:
(1947) A Bulletin "agent" reports that graffiti have been scrawled on
Claverly Hall: "Héloïse loves Abélard" on one corner, "Henry Tudor is
insatiable" on another.
I know graffiti is a plural noun, but I use it as singular. Am I in big trouble?
Apparently not...
In Italian the word graffiti is a plural
noun and its singular form is graffito. Traditionally, the same
distinction has been maintained in English, so that graffiti, being
plural, would require a plural verb: the graffiti were all over the
wall. By the same token, the singular would require a singular verb:
there was a graffito on the wall. Today, these distinctions survive in
some specialist fields such as archaeology but sound odd to most native
speakers. The most common modern use is to treat graffiti as if it were a mass noun, similar to a word like writing, and not to use graffito at all. In this case, graffiti takes a singular verb, as in the graffiti
was all over the wall. Such uses are now widely accepted as standard. A
similar process is going on with other words such as agenda, data, and
media.
by far not the worst case - 'a visa' hurts so much more.
ReplyDeleteDistinguishing singulars from plurals in Latin/Greek/Italian etc. loanwords seems to be on a general decline: See also the common "errors" (I'm a descriptivist, hence the quotation marks) a quota, a phenomena, an automata, a criteria, a zucchini, a panini, etc.
DeleteA somewhat related phenomenon is where an -s ending is interpreted as a plural, while it's actually a singular in the language of origin, leading to "incorrect" singulars like a pleb, a homo sapien, a bicep, etc.
pleb?
DeleteYup. :)
DeleteSo "plebs" is singular at its origin ??
DeleteCorrect; the plural (which, confusingly, means "plebeians") would be plebes.
DeleteThe (graffito)/graffiti "Héloïse loves Abélard" has been scrawled on Claverly Hall.
ReplyDeleteThe graffiti "Héloïse loves Abélard" [and] "Henry Tudor is insatiable" have been scrawled on Claverly Hall.
So...
graffiti have been scrawled on Claverly Hall: "Héloïse loves Abélard" on one corner, "Henry Tudor is insatiable" on another. Even in AmE where collective nouns are treated differently as compared to BrE.
BTW, yes, I'm still trying to get used to "the media is..." and "the data has ..." /cringe/ but I'll get there. Languages grow, and growth is change.
This is one of my pet peeves, particularly in regard to the use of the word "data". The distinction in my opinion is one of countability. There are countable and non-countable nouns in English. An example of a non-countable noun is rice. You don't say one rice or two rice. You say one grain of rice or two grains. Similarly, data has the denotation "data point" to infer a single item. We don't typically say "this datum is an outlier". You say "this data point or these two data points".
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how this would apply to graffiti. What is one graffito and what does it look like? What does two graffiti look like? How would you tell if it is one or two? Seems uncountable to me...
Teaching my research method students "the data are" instead of "the data is" is an unending struggle.
DeleteIt must drive the Binary Maths guys crazy.
ReplyDeleteO = 1 and I = anything from 2 to infinity
Your use of the word "Alumni" brings to mind the license plate frames that proudly proclaim the the driver of the car in front of is an Alumni of one or another place of higher learning.
ReplyDelete