A message from the grammar snob patrol/media studies circuit: "media" is a plural noun

[Writer]

"Media" is the plural form of the word "medium." And indeed, there are multiple MEDIA out there.

So, when you next write, "The media is in a conspiracy with the government to dismantle democratic virtues. I love Chomsky."

Think: Wow, that's wrong!

And write,

"The media ARE in a conspiracy with the government to dismantle democratic virtues? I fucking HATE Chomsky!"

Have a nice day! :hi:

Writer.

[KitchenWitch]

1. And Bacteria is plural for Bacterium!

:hi:

[Writer]

3. Here's one I've always wondered about...

is the plural of penis "peni?" ;)

[KitchenWitch]

LOL

I have mused about that on occasion myself.

:7

[Writer]

5. Well that explains what happened on Penis Thread Night.

:rofl:

[KitchenWitch]

6. Yes, I am constantly thinking about the Penis!

:rofl:

[Oeditpus Rex]

14. Bless you, my child

[Writer]

18. The Jenis! The Jenis!

Make way for the Jenis!

[KitchenWitch]

22. The Jenis - My day is complete!

:woohoo:

:toast:

[Writer]

24. I could stare at the Jenis all day long.

And the night thereafter. :9

[KitchenWitch]

26. I so want to touch the Jenis!

:evilgrin:

[Writer]

29. I'm getting hot for the Jenis!

Whew! Where's my BOB?

[Oeditpus Rex]

28. I was thinking a couple days ago

"Y'know, it's been awhile since you whipped out the Jenis."

[Writer]

30. I bet you could whip with that, boy.

Grrrrrrrr... teach me a lesson, Jenis. :9

[Oeditpus Rex]

DOWN, girl!

Thou shalt not covet graven images adulterously. :spank:

[Writer]

35. Forgive me, Jenis!

Praise Jenis!

[KitchenWitch]

31. And it has!

:evilgrin:

[Oeditpus Rex]

7. I spell it 'penii'

Y'know, because one can never have too many of those vowel things.

But then, I'm part Welsh.

[Writer]

9. Is that pronounced "pen-ay-yay-yay-yay?"

:shrug:

[KitchenWitch]

11. Ah, the Welsh!

:eyes:

<----- Half Irish!

:hi:

[Oeditpus Rex]

13. It has its advantages

Like when reciting certain Python bits, such as the one about the Cave of Caerbaanog. :)

'course, I have to do tonsil curls every day to stay in shape for that.

[trackfan]

37. In Latin it's "penes", I think. It's a third declension noun.

It's actually a euphamism, with the original meaning of "tail".

The real Latin word for dick is "mentula"

[Left Is Write]

2. I hate fucking Chomsky too.

He's kind of old for that sort of thing.

[Writer]

4. That's one of those unfortunate adjective/verb confusion thangers...

;)

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. Beat me to it

"Fucking," as an adverb, should always come before the verb, i.e. "I fucking hate Chomsky."

This eliminates ambiguity, as well as nasty rumors.



Wait — I didn't diagram that right. It's... aw, fucking it. :blush:

[Writer]

10. You guilt me, man!

It has been fixed. :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. Read my edit

I stand self-chastized. :blush:

[KitchenWitch]

15. Shitfuck!

[Oeditpus Rex]

16. Fuckshit!

:rofl:

:toast:

[Writer]

17. But that sounds correct.

An adverb supports a verb, so it would make sense that it would precede the verb. I don't just hate, I FUCKING hate...

or am I missing something?

[Oeditpus Rex]

20. Yeah, but in your original use

"fucking" modified "Chomsky," not "hate."

So it was grammatically correct, but just didn't reflect very well on you. :P

[Writer]

23. LOL... well I'm sure Strunk and White would beat me on the head for it...

and I do not offend Strunk and White. :P

[Lex]

19. The Brits have a different rule for that

sort of thing.

[Writer]

21. I learned that from a Brit...

so... I dunno about that. What did you hear?

[Lex]

32. I found this explanation

"A number of words like army, company, crowd, fleet, government, majority, mess, number, pack, and party may refer either to a single entity or the members of the set that compose it. Thus, as H. W. Fowler describes, in British English they are "treated as singular or plural at discretion"; Fowler notes that occasionally a "delicate distinction" is made possible by discretionary plurals: "The Cabinet is divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and The Cabinet are agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree."<6> Also in British English, names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams but singular verbs when they refer to the actual place: England are playing Germany tonight refers to a football game, but England is the most populous country of the United Kingdom refers to the country. In North American English, such words are invariably treated as singular."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural

[Oeditpus Rex]

25. I find their way more natural

Mer'ka:

"The Dodgers are, but Los Angeles is."

Un-Mer'ka:

"The Dodgers are. So's Los Angeles. And Coventry City."

[Writer]

27. Ah. Now that IS different...

teams are considered a collective and not a whole.

But media, on the other hand, still is a plural noun to the Brits. :D

[Oeditpus Rex]

33. I'm not sure, but I think I may have learned about that

in the "World Forum" bit, in which Lenin, Marx, Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara were on a quiz show, competing for a beautiful lounge suite. One question was, "Coventry City won the FA Cup in what year?" Nobody got it, and the host (Eric Idle) said, "Well, I'm not surprised. It was indeed a trick question; Coventry City have never won the FA Cup."

:D

[jobycom]

34. Clever, though grammatically inaccurate.

When "media" is used with a singular verb or pronoun, it is referring to the collectivity we call the media, not to the plural of medium. Same thing happened to "data."

[Writer]

36. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!

Twenty lashes with a wet Jenis!

I got corrected by two media studies professors for this modern bastardization of the term. It derives from this collectivist logic that the media work in unison. They are not the same entity. They are diverse and should be considered so.

[jobycom]

38. They are grammatically incorrect, too.

Probably they need more fiber in their diets.

They may have their philosophical reasons for wanting to use the term as plural, but grammatically it is known as a "mass noun," which means it is a plural that refers to a collective that is usually considered singular. The key isn't that the media works in conformity, it is that the elements which make up the media are so diverse and numerous as to be uncountable, or at least not practical to represent numerically. When one refers to "the media," one is not referring to specific number of elements, but to the collective whole, and again, not because of any unity, but practically the opposite.

Media can be used accurately as a plural, but also as accurately as a singular.

[Writer]

39. No they don't need fiber in their diets. They are both smart and gifted professors.

From dictionary.com:

Media, like data, is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin. The singular, medium, early developed the meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument” and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago. In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias. This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them: The media is (or are) not antibusiness.

So folks who study media for a living are saying that the above is not correct. What else are we to take from this but that?

[jobycom]

40. Even your citation finds it acceptable

Further, from Merriam-Webster:
2 a singular or plural in construction : MASS MEDIA b plural : members of the mass media
usage The singular media and its plural medias seem to have originated in the field of advertising over 70 years ago; they are apparently still so used without stigma in that specialized field. In most other applications media is used as a plural of medium. The great popularity of the word in references to the agencies of mass communication is leading to the formation of a mass noun, construed as a singular <there's no basis for it. You know, the news media gets on to something -- Edwin Meese 3d> <the media is less interested in the party's policies -- James Lewis, Guardian Weekly>.

From Cambridge: newspapers, magazines, television, and radio, considered as a group See also medium (METHOD).
the news media

From TheFreeDictionary.com: (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The group of journalists and others who constitute the communications industry and profession.

From Oxford English Dictionary: — USAGE The word media comes from the Latin plural of medium. In the normal sense ‘television, radio, and the press collectively’, it often behaves as a collective noun (for example like staff), and can be used with either a singular or a plural verb. Although some people regard the singular use as incorrect, it is now generally accepted in standard English.

---

etc.

[Writer]

41. Whoa, jobycom - hello, sailor!

"The singular media and its plural medias seem to have originated in the field of advertising over 70 years ago; they are apparently still so used without stigma in that specialized field. In most other applications media is used as a plural of medium. The great popularity of the word in references to the agencies of mass communication is leading to the formation of a mass noun, construed as a singular"

I should also note other "popular" words included in the dictionary:

Doh
Wannabe
WMD

Ahhhh the power of yokels - I kid! I kid!

But in all seriousness, the term has been politicized by those who need to view the media as a collective - as a conspiratorial entity. It has also changed because of, well, lazy grammar. My prof's want me to study the media with a clear mind. That's why we view them in the plural. It is a more realistic view of the media.

C'mon, man. I have two degrees in this. And I graduated with honors. Give this media scholar a break! :P :hi:

[jobycom]

42. Well, my degrees are in history

Thus I've watched several languages evolve for thousands of years, and watched grammarians try to hang on to old usages while complaining that contemporary usages were "yokel" or uneducated or whatever. Within another generation someone is defending that change as "proper language" and complaining about new usages.

Language is extremely powerful, and one of the ways that classes are kept stratified is through the concept that the masses speak a lesser form of some language, while the elite speaks "proper" langauge. On top of my two or three degrees (depending on whether I count the associate's degree in engineering), I'm a born and raised blue-collar redneck bumpkin whose family is of the sort commonly ridiculed and trashed by these elite. Thus, my hackles raise when someone implies that common language usages are "wrong," "ungrammatical," or "improper." Proper communication, to me, is not about following an esotoric and arcane set of rules that some grammarian created studying the last generation's concept of proper language, it is about effectively communicating, and when someone says "The media is in a conspiracy with the government to dismantle democratic virtues, I could care less about Chomsky," the message is quite clear and articulate, despite both frowned-upon-by-the-grammar-elitist "mistakes" within the statement. Thus, it is proper, good, and even laudabe English.

I say that as explanation of my perspective, not as an attack. :)

:loveya:

[Bridget Burke]

43. Ernie Kovacks said that "Television is a medium....

Because it is neither rare nor well done."

I definitely agree about "media" & "medium" & have even been known to use "data" as plural; the singular is "datum."

(I don't boast of my punctuation, though. Using the ampersand in a sentence? And many frown on semicolons.)