Plural Confusion and Other Slips
Too, too many, years ago I was a novitiate at Our Lady of Perpetual Correctness, New Jersey branch. The locals' twangs made their garden state sound more like Na' Joysey. No matter. I quickly learned that what sounds wrong to an outsider can be perfectly acceptable when used by an indigenous tribe. While posted in Joysey I often heard confusion of plural forms. For example, the plural of you sometimes came off as yous. No laughing. During my years living among the Joysies, I found them a charming people--they're hunter/gatherers, you know. The men sojourn daily from their settlements in Short Hills, Millburn and Essex County
to hunt on Wall Street. The women stay behind, caring for the children and gathering food stuffs at the Short Hills Mall.
Altogether, the Joysies treated me well while I was at OLPC-NJ. However, taken outside their pleasant little enclave, yous is considered substandard English. The plural of you is you. Just like deer. Whether you have just one or an entire herd, at the end of the day, you still have deer.
Plural names
Plural names can be the devil to get right. We have two Brother Charleses here in the South Bay branch of OLPC. The rule that most often gets you through the plural name mess is to add an S. Unless, that is, the name ends in S, Sh, CH, X or Z. For these cases, add ES. Try it: Eliza/Elizas; Higgins/Higginses; Mary/Marys; Ricardo/Ricardos. Get the drift?
Choose and chose
Let's get this right once and for all, shall we? Choice is a thing--it's a noun. Choose and chose are verbs. If you're describing a fine piece of meat, you might say, "That's a choice filet."
Use the verb, choose, to indicate the act of making a choice in the present. For example, "Father Flannigan, will choose the sacramental wine for tonight's vespers." Remember: Employ choose for action happening now or in the near future. Vespers begins in just five minutes--that's near enough future for me.
On the other hand, use the verb chose to describe past action. "Sister Marguerite Baptiste chose the menu for the Annunciation breakfast."
There I've done it. Now I'm late for vespers. Until next time, I'm SMP for WRG. TTFN (see last month's issue by clicking: SMP's Misle Archives).
Source: Woe Is I by Patricia O'Conner Riverhead Books, 1996
