Saturday Morning Breakfast Plurals
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SMBC from a couple of days ago:
The mouseover title: "I settled this years ago and it's pronounced hyeef."
The aftercomic:
The next day, we learn about the invisible hand of the market making out with the long arm of the law, post-apocalyptically.
And after that, we see how Facebook will improve our user experience.
GH said,
May 3, 2025 @ 1:44 am
What is Language Log's take on this one?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2477622-tom-gauld-on-grammatical-voices-for-use-in-scientific-writing/
Mark Liberman said,
May 3, 2025 @ 4:18 am
@GH: "What is Language Log's take on this one?"
They got active/passive right, and the rest of it is clever:
unekdoud said,
May 3, 2025 @ 5:20 am
"You don't pluralize filenames" Hold my beers.jpg while I scroll through several indices.html to download my tracks1.mp3
Jonathan Smith said,
May 3, 2025 @ 10:25 am
Speaker says "gifs" in first frame, so presumably by "you don't pluralize filenames" he means "you *do* pluralize file *extensions* but regularly as opposed to analogically based on irregular [or simply random] plurals of one's choosing"
Richard Hershberger said,
May 3, 2025 @ 12:35 pm
The running debate in baseball is what is the plural of RBI. The silly argument is that is stands for both the singular and the plural: "He had one RBI in the game" vs. "He had three RBI in the game." The argument explicitly is that the plural marker is buried in the initialism, and so in invisible. Most people roll their eyes and say "He had three RBIs in the game" and go about their day, but you can find some people who carefully avoid this.
Richard Hershberger said,
May 3, 2025 @ 12:36 pm
To add for non-baseball people, "RBI" stands for "run[s] batted in."
Cervantes said,
May 3, 2025 @ 12:41 pm
Is it doofuses or doofi? I always had trouble with the Latin plurals.
Yves Rehbein said,
May 3, 2025 @ 1:38 pm
@ Cervantes, it's both, if German Doofi, pl. Doofis, diminutive -i (dummy) is enough to suggest that's what student slang took to backform a Latinate ending –us. It could, of course, be a different formation, say ox, such that dumb[f] oxen would be the correct plural (in that case, the aspirate has to be blamed on Celtic).
Incidently, the fricative is not voiceless in Doofi "idiot", unlike doof "duh (viz. *dough?). It's pronounced HYEEVES.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 3, 2025 @ 4:14 pm
@Richard Hershberger: Does anyone argue for RsBI? I would say in support of the most-people-rolling-their-eyes position that the plural (if you're pedantic) of "attorney general" is "attorneys general" but the plural of the initialism "AG" is "AG's" (or "AGs" if you prefer it that way).
Is there a dispute about the plural of HBP?