my gut reaction was that this is probably something to do with AAVE but I cannot for the life of me think of an example I’ve actually heard someone say, and I was living in the rural south for a couple years where the average education is… less than ideal…
maybe it’s an ESL issue mainly? I’m almost certain I’m messing up the Spanish equivalents rn stumbling my way through a Spanish speaking country rn 😭
can you think of any specific examples of someone making this mistake? I’ll give you a dollar if you find one in this comment of mine (I’m not proofreading it :3 )
Hmm didn’t consider AAVE. Off the top of my hear I can’t. Most occurrences of the mix up that I’ve seem have been in conversations at work, or news articles.
Ohh, that one gets me. If it’s e.g. a single USB stick or a piece of paper it’s a medium, not a media. And if you have a bunch of data, a single piece of it should be a datum as well, imo. There’s more (latin based) words like that that I can’t think of right now that do this.
So datum would be a singular piece of data. But it gets confusing and varies based on what you’re talking about. If you have a database filled with n files, each having m ints, then you can say that each of these files is a datum of that database, but at the same time, each of these datum is data; with each of the ints being datum. But then each of the ints had multiple bits, so the ints themselves are data. So it depends which level you’re talking about.
There is an epidemic of people mixing up the usage of the words “is” and “are”. Use “are” as the general catchall word.
For third person singular subjects use “is”.
There is a game. There are games.
Uncountable things use “is”.
There is the forest. There are the trees.
Are there people? Is there a person.
Are we there yet. Is our destination close?
If the subject uses a definite number use “are”.
The team is going to the game.
The fourteen players are going to the game.
my gut reaction was that this is probably something to do with AAVE but I cannot for the life of me think of an example I’ve actually heard someone say, and I was living in the rural south for a couple years where the average education is… less than ideal…
maybe it’s an ESL issue mainly? I’m almost certain I’m messing up the Spanish equivalents rn stumbling my way through a Spanish speaking country rn 😭
can you think of any specific examples of someone making this mistake? I’ll give you a dollar if you find one in this comment of mine (I’m not proofreading it :3 )
Hmm didn’t consider AAVE. Off the top of my hear I can’t. Most occurrences of the mix up that I’ve seem have been in conversations at work, or news articles.
Ahhh Hank Green why must you serve as my example:
You’ll probably hate this, but my relevant take: “data” can be singular and using it as plural sounds wrong.
Ohh, that one gets me. If it’s e.g. a single USB stick or a piece of paper it’s a medium, not a media. And if you have a bunch of data, a single piece of it should be a datum as well, imo. There’s more (latin based) words like that that I can’t think of right now that do this.
So datum would be a singular piece of data. But it gets confusing and varies based on what you’re talking about. If you have a database filled with n files, each having m ints, then you can say that each of these files is a datum of that database, but at the same time, each of these datum is data; with each of the ints being datum. But then each of the ints had multiple bits, so the ints themselves are data. So it depends which level you’re talking about.
The only datum I can think of is tidal datum, used in shoreline measurements. I’ve seen the plural given as datums though… argh!