Comments by "Karen Phinney" (@karphin1) on "Weird plurals in English: Men, geese, sheep, knives and many more" video.

  1. Hahaha……good one!
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  2. I’m guessing you’re a linguist! ☺️
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  3. It has been a bugbear to me to hear people using criteria, or phenomena, as a singular word. As in, “the criteria is……”, argh. And I was peeved over “the data is”, but realize the ship has sailed on that one, as of a few years. English is evolving, as you point out in your talks! Words morphing and new ones added all the time. And our many borrowings! Fun to watch, and learn, about the origins of so many words we use all the time.
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  4. You’ve touched on a few of my “bugbears”, I hear people on the radio, our CBC here in Canada, which should know better, saying criteria when they mean criterion. I also, bc I studied science and Latin, used to get upset about data being used as a singular. I would think, as a collective word it should have a plural verb. Like, “the people are “, not the “people is”, or “many are”, not “many is”. Same for phenomena, often used as a singular. There are other things which I find grating, but heaven knows, I’m not perfect! As to data, I realize the ship has sailed on that. It is now the data is, the data has, but I still am not comfortable with that!
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