965. It's a listener question extravaganza! I answer your questions about "canceled," "another think/thing coming," zero plurals such as "fish," the way I reference verbs, episode numbers, "at about," mangos versus green peppers, and musgos.
965. It's a listener question extravaganza! I answer your questions about "canceled," "another think/thing coming," zero plurals such as "fish," the way I reference verbs, episode numbers, "at about," mangos versus green peppers, and muskgos. (And if I didn't answer your question, don't despair. I hope to do another show with listener questions in a month or two.)
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.
This week, I'm going to answer a bunch of listener questions, but before we get started, I'm super excited to tell you about a new thing I'm doing called Grammarpalooza!
You make my work possible just by listening to the show and the ads, and I completely appreciate each and every one of you who just listens. (And yes, "each and every" is redundant, but it's idiomatic to use it for emphasis. I appreciate EACH AND EVERY one of you!)
But for years, people have also been asking for a way to directly support the show, and I've finally come up with something a little different that I think you'll like. For $4.99 a month, you can get text messages from me — lots of fun language facts you'll want to share with friends … maybe some behind-the-scenes tidbits, and a convenient link to the podcast. So if you want to directly support the show and become a Grammarpaloozian, visit joinsubtext.com/grammar. That's joinsubtext.com/grammar. The first two weeks are free so you can try it out, and I'll put it in the show notes. And it's also in my email newsletter and on my social channels. And thanks to everyone for all your support over the years.
And now, on to your questions:
"Hi, Grammar Girl. I would love to know why some words don't double the consonant when you're making them past tense. I misspell "canceled" or "reveled." I misspell it all the time because I want to put a double L. And I don't really understand how to identify when those exceptions are or really why the exceptions are if it's because of the language the word came from or what. Thank you so much. I would love if you would solve this mystery for me. Bye. "
Thanks for the question! You are NOT misspelling these words, and it's all Noah Webster's fault that you're confused. We covered this back in 2020 in episode 763, and here's the deal:
"Canceled" with one L is the main American English spelling, and "cancelled" with two L's is the main British spelling. Noah Webster was a big proponent of simplified spelling, and his early dictionary included spellings like "T-U-N-G" for "tongue" and "W-I-M-M-E-N" for "women." It wasn't well received, so he dialed back the weird spellings, but still sneaked a few through, like removing the U from the words "color" and "favor," and the second L from words like "canceled," "traveled," "labeled," "marveled," and "signaled."
The Associated Press Stylebook, used by many American news outlets, recommends “canceled” with one L, and when I'm typing in Google Docs, it puts a red squiggly "misspelled" line under "cancelled" with two L's, but that's just because they're using American spelling conventions.
“Cancelled” with two L’s is clearly the dominant form in British English, and my Canadian and Australian friends tell me it is also the preferred form in Canadian English and Australian English. And I’ll add that whenever I talk about this rule, I always hear from Americans who tell me they prefer the 2-L version, so you're definitely not alone in feeling drawn to those two L's. Thanks for the question!
Hi, Mignon. It's Emily Aborn. And I was just calling because I read in a book last night, "You Have Another Think Coming." And at first I thought it was a typo, but then they went on in the book to explain that it was actually 'think,' not 'thing.' So I am curious to hear from you if it's "You Have Another Thing Coming" or "Another Think Coming."
Hey, Emily! We covered this in episode 804 back in 2020 (Internet Archive). The short answer is that the book you were reading is correct: "another think coming" is the original phrase. It first appeared in Britain in the late 1800s, and it's still the much more common way of saying the phrase there, but "you have another THING coming" is used about equally often in American English. And showing the power of pop culture to change language, the "thing" version increased in both regions in the 1980s, around the time that Judas Priest released the song "You've Got Another Thing Coming." And again, if you want to know more about this phrase, check out episode 804.
And also, Emily is the host of the "She Built This" podcast, and I was a guest on her show back in March of 2023 talking about how I started the Grammar Girl podcast, so check that out if you're interested. And thanks for the call, Emily.
Hi, Mignon. My name is Jonathan. I'm a big fan of your podcast.
I'm calling because recently, my son who is in sixth grade asked a question while we were driving. He said, Did I know that the plural of 'lettuce' is 'lettuce,' which led us to a conversation about words in which the plural and singular forms are the same? I became interested in this topic and did a little dive on the internet.
I was curious if you could perhaps discuss this. I couldn't find a specific term for words that are both the same in singular and plural forms. I found words that are countable and uncountable, but that's somewhat different. And I would love to hear any background or information that you have on words that are the same in both singular and plural form. Thank you so much, and love your work.
Hi, Jonathan! You're right that you're dealing with a mass noun or non-count noun in "lettuce." You can have a head of lettuce, but you don't usually have just "a lettuce." If you're talking about a variety, you might say something like that's a lettuce with delicate leaves, but you wouldn't usually say you have "a lettuce" in the fridge. You'd say you have "a head of lettuce" or "some lettuce." And in some cases, you actually can say "lettuces," for example, if gardeners are talking about a group of plants with similar characteristics, they might say something like "these lettuces grow well in our area." It's like the word "fish," which can also have two plurals: “fish” is what we use most of the time — "look at all the fish!" — but scientists sometimes use “fishes” to describe multiple species of fish.
But there are also words that are countable that have the same form whether they’re singular or plural, and the name you were looking for is "zero plural." That's what linguists call nouns like "deer" and "sheep" that are the same whether they are singular or plural. There was a deer in my yard this morning, or there were five deer in my yard this morning. Either way, the word is "deer."
These go all the way back to a time when Old English nouns had genders — masculine, feminine, and neuter, just like German, and some neuter nouns were treated as "zero plurals."
In her book "Highly Irregular," linguist Arika Okrent says a bunch of new words got added to the zero plural class over time, which is unusual. Normally, words would tend toward the regular pattern of adding "-s" or "-es" to make them plural — like how "agendum" became "agendas" and "hippopotami" became "hippopotamuses" — but a few words tended toward the irregular pattern of zero plurals instead. And when you look, you find that these are mostly words that have similar meanings, in that if they are animals, they tend to be animals that humans use for food such as moose, elk, bison, buffalo, fish, salmon, and so on.
But not all zero-plurals are animals, the class also includes words such as “aircraft” and “species.”
Thanks for the question, Jonathan, and I hope your son likes the answer about zero plurals. And if you want to get more of a taste of Arika Okrent's book, "Highly Irregular," I had an excerpt back in 2021 in episode 831 about the phrase "the exception that proves the rule."
"Hi, Mignon. I have a question … actually, well, really more of a query. I was just wondering when is it appropriate to use the word 'funnily' instead of the word 'funny.' I know we hear it a lot, hearing it with like 'funnily enough, this happened,' but I see that you used it in sentences. A friend of mine said one the other day, and it just sounded wrong. Any clarification would be much appreciated. Thanks, love the show."
"Funnily" is an adverb, which means you use it to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and even whole sentences. It's not very common, and in fact, Bryan Garner mentions "funnily" in a paragraph about "unusual adverbs" in his book Garner's Modern English Usage. So that's one reason it sounds weird to you. I believe the phrase "funnily enough" is where you're most likely to hear it, for example, when I pull up the Wordnik online dictionary, which pulls example sentences from modern sources, all 10 examples it displays include the phrase "funnily enough."
But you can use it in sentences. You could say something like "That dog walks so funnily," and that's perfectly correct. It's just unusual.
I think one reason "funnily" is unusual is that "funny" can also be an adverb. Although it's typically thought of as an adjective, as in "That dog has a funny walk," you can use it where you'd use "funnily." For example, in American English "funny enough" appears a little bit more often in edited books than "funnily enough," which is actually far more common in British English.
Thanks for the query.
Oh, and I had to laugh a little bit because I wasn't actually sure what the difference is between a question and a query, and I bet people will wonder or ask, so here's what I found. A question is any kind of request for information, but Merriam-Webster says a query can be a request "especially with a desire for authoritative information" or "especially in order to resolve a doubt." So I hope I resolved your doubt in an authoritative way.
“Hi, Mignon. This is Eeyu calling from Los Angeles. I have two questions for you, actually. So first question is, I noticed that whenever you refer to a verb, you would refer to it in its infinitive form. For example, to go, to eat, etc. My question is, is there a rule that verbs, when you refer to verbs, it has to be in its infinitive form? Because you don't do similar things for adjectives, adverbs, or nouns. Yeah, this is my first question. My second question is, I noticed that you stopped numbering your episodes in podcast, but I actually find that these numbers could be a really good reference tag. So I hope that you could consider adding those numbers back. Thank you. Love your podcast. Bye-bye.”
Thanks, Eeyu.
I have actually never noticed that I do that when I'm talking about verbs, but you're right. I will say something like "the adverb 'funnily,'" but when I talk about verbs, I usually say something like "the verb 'to walk.'" It's not a rule that you refer to verbs that way, it's just a weird thing I do. I guess I think the rhythm is better that way or something. It just sounds better to me. Interesting question.
And yes … episode numbers. A few years ago, Apple Podcasts created an episode number field and asked podcasters to stop putting episode numbers in the show titles. So we did that, but I don't know what they use the episode number field for because it clearly doesn't show up when you're browsing episodes.
We did it that way for about a year — where the episode numbers weren't immediately visible in most podcast players — but it bugged me too, so I started adding them at the beginning of the show description and even more recently also including them as the episode thumbnails, so you should be able to quickly see the episode numbers now in all but those few episodes from 2021 and a little bit of 2022. Thanks for the questions.
"Hello, Grammar Girl. This is Andrew Rubin calling you from Los Angeles. I just read an article which used the term 'at about' as in 'the match ended at about 1:40 a.m.' I was always taught that that was an incorrect redundancy, or actually currently redundant, that it was either at 1:40 a.m. or was about 1:40 a.m., but it couldn't be at about, because 'at' implies something specific. Do you have an opinion on that? Thanks a lot. Still enjoy your show after all of these years. It's amazing how clever you can be coming up with new topics."
Thank you for the kind words, Andrew! I'm amazed too that there's still so much to talk about after all these years, but I'm glad because I like my job!
I had actually never heard an objection to the phrase "at about," but Garner says, "This phrase is sometimes criticized as a redundancy, the argument being that 'about' can often do the work by itself. It often can, but in many contexts, especially those involving expressions of time, the phrase 'at about' is common, idiomatic, and unimpeachable. “We'll arrive at about 9:00 tonight." So there you go! Garner tends to be on the prescriptive side too, so I feel pretty confident saying that people shouldn't worry about using the phrase "at about" when they're referring to a time.
Another fun thing about the word "about" that Garner mentions (and again, this is in the wonderful book Garner's Modern English Usage) is that you can often choose between the word "about" and "around," as in "beat around the bush" or "beat about the bush."
In keeping with what seems to be a theme in this episode, there's a difference between British and American English. In American English, "around" is the word we usually use. "Beat about the bush" has been far more common in British English, until just a few years ago when "beat around the bush" slightly edged out "beat about the bush" even in British English. Today, it looks like "beat around the bush" and "beat about the bush" are used almost equally in British English.
Thanks for the interesting question. I also find it amazing that after all these years I still hear questions I've never heard before.
Finally, I have an almost familect.
“Hi, Grammar Girl. One of our familect words, the most prominent one, was mango for green pepper. I don't know how it originated or why. It was only when I was 21 and in the military that I found out that mango and green pepper were actually different items. Thank you. Keep up the good work on your program.”
Thanks for the call! This is a regionalism, but people have called in a couple of times thinking it was a familect, so you aren't the first! In fact, I talked about it for someone just like you in episode 710 back in 2019.
The short answer is that in areas around Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, people look at what most of us call green peppers and call them mangoes or mango peppers. It seems to go back to times when the orange mango fruit was exotic and hard to get in Britain and the United States, but there are a couple of different theories about how green peppers picked up the name. It may be related to mangos being pickled before they were shipped from India, or it may be related to — believe it or not — people substituting green peppers for mangoes in recipes. It's an interesting story of gardening and cooking in early America, and you can hear the whole thing in episode 710.
And finally today, I have a call about another familect.
"Hi, Mignon. My name is Eric Petty. I currently am a pastor in Pennsylvania, but for the first 15 years of my career I was down in South and Central Texas. I listened to amusement when Elaine from Wyoming talked about her familects of 'musko.' I'm afraid to tell her it wasn't only her family. I heard that all the time down there from different parishioners, especially when I was being invited over for a more informal gathering or meal, and they were going to want to clean out the refrigerator. They said we're having a 'must go dinner' because everything must go. Thanks so much for the show."
Thanks for the call, Eric. It's definitely not the first time someone has thought a regionalism was a familect, but I don't mind. I want you all to keep calling in with your stories because even when they turn out to be regionalisms, they're always interesting.
And in fact, if you want to call with your familect, the number is 83-321-4-GIRL. And starting now, I'll also be taking your voice memos through Grammarpalooza. You're hearing about it here first on the podcast, (this is the worldwide debut!) and if you want to directly support my work, you can sign up to get text messages from me at joinsubtext.com/grammar, and once you're in, you can also send your questions and familect stories that way.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; director of podcasts, Brannan Goetschius; audio engineer, Nathan Semes; marketing assistant, Kamryn Lacey; digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; and marketing associate, Davina Tomlin, who many people are surprised to learn is a huge country music fan.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.