Transcript of “Can You Have Four Corn?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, how are you?
All right, who is this and where are you?
Calling from Berlin, Maryland, and my name is Nancy Corbett.
Hi, Nancy. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?
So I have a produce stand and I sell white sweet corn.
When people buy the corn, sometimes they buy a dozen or they buy half a dozen, but they can also buy it by the ear.
So when they come up to pay, if they put them in a bag, I’ll just say, how many corn do you have? Or I’ll say, how many ears do you have today?
And, you know, sometimes they say six ears or sometimes they say a dozen.
But sometimes people say they have four corns, plural.
And other people say they have four corn.
Or they say four ears, but they never say four ear.
So it’s always confused me.
When they put an S on the corn, to me it sounds strange.
So I thought I would ask you all because I’m sure you could get to the bottom of it.
Martha, if you walked up to Nancy at her produce stand and you had an ironful of corn, what would you say when she asked you how many you had?
You know, I never really thought about this.
I guess I would say four corns.
I think I would, actually.
You’d say the plural.
And that would bother you?
Yeah.
Yeah, I would.
But that’s just a reflex.
That’s so interesting.
I don’t know, Grant, is that your reflex as well?
Well, I’m looking at it as a linguist and thinking about it.
That perspective and now that you know it’s one of those things where if you ask about it then you can’t unconsciously do a thing.
Yeah, yeah, that’s true.
I mean corn is is usually a mass noun, right? Like sheep or milk, we don’t say I have, yeah, typically.
But you can pluralize these things, Nancy.
And that’s the thing, English allows it to be plural even though it’s a mass noun and we do that for clarity and also just to be a bit briefer, not to have to say all the way I have three ears of corn.
I would say I have three corns and you understand what they’re saying, they know what they meant.
Clarity has been transmitted from person A to person B, right?
Okay, so there really isn’t a rule.
Well, there there’s a rule in formal language, but these kinds of casual encounters are a little looser and English permits it.
We do the same thing at a diner.
If you went to a diner, bacon and coffee are both mass nouns, but you’ll tell the waiter, we’ll take two coffees.
Right.
And what you mean is two cups of coffee. You’ve just alighted or left out the cup.
You know what? I think that there are going to be a lot of listeners who want to weigh in on this one way or another.
Really? Okay.
Yeah. And maybe stop by your stand as well.
Yes.
Would love that.
I can sell them four-year or four-ears.
All right.
Well, look for Nancy’s produce stand in Maryland, everyone.
Does it have a name?
Yes.
This is called Bluebird Farms, and we’re also a plant nursery.
Oh, nice.
Nice.
Okay.
We’ll pop by next time we’re there.
Nancy, thank you for this thorny topic, this corny topic.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
