It is far safer and better to use a natural English plural when in doubt than to use a Latin or Greek plural. Only when the English plural is truly awful, such as basises or thesises, should you use the foreign plurals. But if in doubt, choosing the foreign plural to sound knowledgable can be a mistake. Here are some common errors:
Octopus – Greek root so the correct foreign plural would be octopodes, just use octopuses.
Ignoramus – idiomatic verb, not a noun. No foreign plural, use ignoramuses.
Processes – not of Greek origin. Do not pronounce the ‘es’ like ‘theses’ but like ‘recesses’.
Agenda – already a plural, use agendas.
The cognate object
One of the most common mistakes for well educated foreign English speakers is a misunderstanding of the cognate object.
They will say ‘the food tastes well’ recognising that taste is a verb and should therefore take the adverb ‘well’.
Native English speakers will say ‘the food tastes good’ but if pressed will consider it idiomatic and perhaps technically a mistake.
It is actually a form of the cognate object, where an object which is closely associated with the verb is understood and omitted intentionally. In this example the object is ‘a good taste’.
If you think of the difference between ‘the dog smells well’ and ‘the dog smells good’, which both have their own meaning, you can see the second example has a cognate object. The dog smells a good smell’ and ‘good’ is the correct adjectival form.
Whom do you love?
Compared with many other languages, English has very little use for cases. You can rarely find the accusative case in pronouns such as whom, me or him. Because of its rarity and the lack of understanding on how to use them, they have become a pedant’s delight, and a prime target for mistaken corrections. It is all too common for people to say ‘my friend and I’ rather than ‘my friend and me’ in any circumstance without thinking of the case. The easiest way to tell which firm if the pronoun to use is to remove the other person. I was recently corrected when I said ‘it was up to my father and me’ and told it should be ‘it was up to my father and I’. If we took out ‘my father’ it is clear that ‘me’ is the right pronoun. Even in cases where ‘I’ is correct, ‘me’ can be used perfectly well idiomatically, such as ‘it’s me’ rather than the pompous sounding ‘it is I’. Tolerate, don’t berate.
Never end a sentence a preposition with
Another pedant’s favourite, but more style guide than rule and hardly offensive enough to turn a genuine sentence into an abomination.
‘That is the kind of pedantry up with which we shall not put’ is an old but poignant rejoinder.
To boldly split
Split infinitives are the pedant’s delight. But let us remember what the father of pedantry, H.W.Fowler said about the subject:
The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. . . . Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are happy folk, to be envied by the minority classes.
So don’t make a sentence horrific just to avoid it.
An historic
It is a simple choice whether to use ‘a’ or ‘an’ as the indefinite article before words that begin with H.
It is purely based on pronunciation. If you aspirate (breathe) the H then use ‘a’, otherwise ‘an’.
When the first syllable is not accented as in ‘historic’ the initial H can be dropped, and in this case ‘an historic’ is fine. But please don’t use ‘an’ and aspirate the H. You will sound like an tool.
