• When you don't know anything about linguistics: The plural of "memorandum" is "memoranda", why can't people get it right
  • When you know a little about linguistics: The plural of "memorandum" should just be "memorandums" because that's how people naturally say it, "memoranda" is just prescriptivism
  • When you know a lot about linguistics: Oh my god? So certain English words borrowed from Latin and Greek have competing plural forms, with one form using the English plural -s and the other using a borrowed Latin or Greek form? Do you realize how crazy that is - a language borrowing *inflectional morphology* from another language? And here the two competing plural forms have become markers of education, expertise, and social class, isn't that incredible?

Tags: i am somehow all three of these people simultaneously like it bothers the fuck out of me that people don't say 'memoranda' but on the other hand language evolves so 'memorandums' but language is so cool so fuck it all i don't give a goddamn shit look at it all it's so interesting linguistics