Celia, from Spokane, Washington, is unhappy that fewer and fewer English speakers seem aware of the correct plurals of Latin and Greek words. She is bothered, for example, when someone refers to minimums rather than minima. Minima is more often a British usage, as is maxima, for the plural of maximum, rather than maximums. It’s possible to carry such things too far, though. For example, agenda in Latin literally means “things that must be done,” but we still speak of multiple agendas. Certain words from other languages become nativized in English, and Greek and Latin words that do retain their plurals tend to be in particular scientific fields. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Minima and Maxima”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Celia calling from Spokane, Washington.
Hi, Celia. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?
Hello. Well, I’m concerned about the loss of correct use of plurals of some words of Latin and Greek origin that are now part of our language.
The one that really has been irritating me for several weeks is on an advertisement for a financial services company, and they keep saying, investment minimums apply.
I can hear you shuddering.
I shudder every time. I heard it this morning, and I gritted my teeth again.
Oh, dear.
Investment minimums apply.
So what would you rather they say?
Well, as I would understand it, the plural should be minima.
Minima. Good. We can work with this.
Tell us a little bit about your own education.
Where are you from? What’s your schooling?
We can hear that you’re not from North America, probably?
No. I was born in London, in England, and I had a pretty multilingual education in Belgium, Sweden, and Finland for the first 11 years of my life.
And then I was back in Britain, and I went to schools where I think I did Latin for four years, and I certainly took one year of Greek.
I worry about language, and then I’m also wondering, am I just being an old fogey?
Is this something that I… I mean, I’ve been asking a few friends, and I noticed that the one that they were happy with is the plural of fungus is fungi.
Because I asked them, I said, would you really say funguses? And they said, oh, no, no, that’s fungi.
All right, Celia, let’s circle in on this.
So you had the benefit of a multilingual education, which I am so envious of.
You’re in a great position to talk about this.
And most Americans don’t grow up in an environment where Greek and Latin are anything that’s even offered to them, even at a college level.
Grant’s right. It’s increasingly rare, unfortunately.
But to go back to minimum, the plural of it being minima, that is a very British usage.
That is something that’s far more common in the UK.
Do you also say maxima for the plural of maximum?
Oh, yes. And if I was really being scrupulous, I would say stadia instead of stadiums.
Yeah, we have this degrees of nativization that happens with foreign words.
And to be honest, these Latin words still are foreign.
They slowly, each one of them takes their own path into English.
And they’re kind of like children.
They get further and further away from their home until, before you know it, they have their own lives and families.
And some of them are fully English now, and so they take an English plural.
And some of them still feel very Latin, and so they take a Latin plural.
And the ones that feel most Latin tend to be those that are especially connected with the scientific fields.
And so that’s why a word like fungus probably will for a long time have fungi as a plural.
And same for things like spectrum, spectrums by non-specialist, spectra by specialist, and so forth.
Foci for focus or focuses, we have many of these again and again and again.
But we can only take this so far. Should we stop using agenda as a singular and instead say agendum?
Yeah, what do you think about that one, Celia? Do you use a plural verb with agenda?
I would say somebody would have different agenda. Yes, I guess the problem becomes, do we then put it back into the singular and say, this is my most important agendum?
I think that would be a difficult one to go back to.
Exactly, exactly.
But yes, the Latin agenda means the things that you have to get done.
It is plural.
Right.
Well, Celia, I’ve got to tell you, you certainly have this precious store of knowledge that clearly you cherish, and rightfully so.
And it is, oh, if I could have been, if I could have had your childhood and all those opportunities to live in Finland and Sweden and to learn Latin and Greek, how delightful that would have been for me.
Because I was into languages at an early age.
But, and this is what gives you that special eye.
You have this watchful eye on the language.
This is how you, you have this special observance.
Well, it adds richness to my life.
It really does.
Exactly.
Thank you so much, both of you.
All right, take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
