Setting Things Straight
I wrote this in a comments reply. Some things that you thought were right, but are in fact wrong.
Fruit vs fruits/Fish vs fishes/Bread vs breads–If you didn't know already, you're not supposed to add the plural marker -s or -es just for the sake of identifying the noun as a plural one. The plural marker is implemented to distinguish variety. The singular form is also used as the usual plural form for all these words. Did you not know this already?
Anyway I learnt this on the job. Took me months of un-learning to do. On the other hand, I do make up my own grammatical rules here and there. The language is a living one, Damn it. You can't kill it by keeping it static. Leave it to the bloggers to cook up new terms, invent new hybrids. Besides, the word 'blog' didn't exist 10 years ago.
September 9th, 2004 at 10:15 pm
people vs peoples…
September 10th, 2004 at 10:20 am
Welcome to English Language 101
September 10th, 2004 at 10:22 pm
i thought there isn’t such a thing as “peoples”. unless it had an apostrophe?
is it correct to say a variety of fish? or variety of fishes? variety is plural right? so using fishes would be redundant?
do we have to pay you for consultation fee? ^__~
September 11th, 2004 at 3:08 pm
“peoples”, as in different nationalities, races, etc. the use of an aspostrophe would indicate a possessive instance.
for me, no consultancy fee required.
for minishorts, that’s for her to say.
September 12th, 2004 at 1:33 am
OOOH! I remember watching Powder, and the protagonist said “sarcasms”. I thought it was weird. We all think it’s “sarcasm” but hey we can get “orgasms”.