"Octopussy" implies James Bond will be around.
Can’t we just chalk this up to language evolves and how you pronounce the plural version extinct animals or certain marine life doesn’t really matter.
Can we not just turn this into a bunch of nonsensical puns and non sequiturs already.
Where did Latin and Greek come from? If you can trace language back to its very first roots, you might have an argument for "correctness." Our words that come from Latin and Greek came from somewhere else first, but there's no advocacy for that Ur-language.
I manage to grin and bear it whenever I hear the word "ninjas" or "samurais". That kind of thing is annoying, but if people understand the intention and what's being said, it doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.
Hmmm ... I understand that language can evolve, but I'm w/ Silverleaf on this one. If there's a known standard for something, I prefer saying things correctly.
See also "paninis", and "panini" used for a single sandwich. Petty, but it isn't hard to understand that panini is plural and panino singular, right?
It bugs me when people get stuff wrong too...just because "everybody does it" doesn't mean it's right. "Mediums" is one that I hear on telly sometimes, and there used to be this woman called...Doctor something-or-other (but she got her "doctorate" by just sending off for it or something) who did a "health" programme where she'd tell people off for eating junk and get them to crap in a box and inspect the contents to see how bad their diet was...yet she constantly referred to "all those little bacterias". Whaaat?! A so-called "doctor" who specialises in bodily stuff who doesn't know that "bacteria" is already a plural? Arrgh!
People who say stuff like "skellington" when they mean "skeleton" and "Pacific" when they mean "specific" bug me too. And people who say stuff like "would of" and "could of" when they mean "would've" and "could've". And people who use American spellings...even if they're American ;).
Yeah, I'm picky about that stuff. Shock horror :O.
Yinz' guys should be learned to talk right.
Me fail english? That’s unpossible!
They're vocabulistics is limited...
Gillian McKeith. Or, to give her full medical title, Gillian McKeith.
http://www.badscience.net/2007/02/ms-gillian-mckeith-banned-from-calling-herself-a-doctor/
Haha yes, that's her :D.
This whole plural business is why the English language is a wreck.
No, the English language is a wreck because it was formed by taking several other languages and smooshing them together. The plurals are a secondary issue.
'Smooshing' is a good word. I need to use it more often.
Well, it's a contributing factor but not the causation.
Not the original quote, but still. Enjoy!
I'm assuming the prescriptivists here still use the term "ax" instead of "ask" when it comes to axing a question.
I hear people say they want to "arks" a question sometimes. What.