Change the Curriculums

English has no trouble coöpting or adapting words from other languages. If that word is a noun, we usually just drop an "s" or "es" on the end for plurals—regardless of how pluralization is done in the original language. But for some reason, this rule just does not follow with many Latin words. Vertebra becomes vertebrae; medium becomes media; curriculum becomes curricula; cactus becomes cacti. And yet bonus becomes bonuses and album becomes albums. Some are interchangeable; syllabus can be either syllabuses or syllabi. The more pedantic the speaker, the more likely they will use the later.

It is capricious which words are usually pluralized according to English rules and which are pluralized using Latin words.

Anglicized words should use standard English pluralization. Why the exception for Latin? Some of these words are probably too late to Anglicize, but I am going to continue to refer to syllabuses and cactuses. But if you hear me refer to "the mainstream mediums," I am (probably) being ironic.

Word of the Day: Homophily

I was introduced to a new word today, and fellow logophiles might enjoy it: homophily. It is a word for the idea that people group themselves with likeminded people, or "birds of a feather flock together. I heard about it on On the Media which is my favorite radio program. Listen to it here:

I really like this word because for a while now I have been puzzling over the success of Fox News. No one I know really takes Fox News seriously, and in my circle of friends, it is a bit of a joke. And I cannot figure who these people are who are watching Fox News. Don't they know how obviously biased it is? But of course I chose my friends, and my classmates chose the same school as me. The Fox News watchers chose their friends and their jobs too. These days most everyone spends some amount of time on the internet, but once again, we all chose where we go, what we read, and what we listen to.

Ethan Zuckerman's blog about homophily is where On the Media got the idea in the first place. He has some good ideas about how to seek out new ideas.

Apparently, sociologist have been studying homophily for sometime. I thought it was a neologism, but apparently the word has been around since the fifties. (I suppose, depending on your perspective, that words coined in the fifties are neologisms.) The word did not catch on much then, but because it is possible to choose to only get news that confirms one's own world view, the word is making a comeback.

Read the New York Times article written back in December 2006, which points out other ways that homophily works: Amazon recommends books based on what people have already read and people like their dates more when they have a lot in common.

I never really believed opposites attract . . .