Aside: I've been reminding people for years that "they" is plural; why do I have to do the same with "media?" Media is the plural of medium, where you originate your writing, Steve. What's next? "People is?" Not aimed at Steve, most people do this.
Repeat after me. Media are. Media are. Social media are. I mean, we aren't talking …
Aside: I've been reminding people for years that "they" is plural; why do I have to do the same with "media?" Media is the plural of medium, where you originate your writing, Steve. What's next? "People is?" Not aimed at Steve, most people do this.
Repeat after me. Media are. Media are. Social media are. I mean, we aren't talking about complex declensions here (English doesn't have them) or reflexive verbs. We're talking about singular and plural.
There is no doubt that social media are harmful. They encourage hyperfactionalization. Yes, there was racial animus before Facebook but nothing validates a racist like seeing himself as part of a movement, something that was hard to maintain when racists had to be face to face with their fellow bigots and could see that they were a mob of losers.
Triviality reminder: there are almost no emotional controls online. You don't get facial expressions and you can shut out disagreement with a click (we all do it; no "they/them" in my browser). The MAGAts are on pages I never see and they don't see any caring sentiment.
The attempted insurrection on the Brazilian seat of government was organized on Facebook; TikTok is so aggressively shallow that unpopular kids commit suicide from it; Twitter is a cesspool of hate speech. It gave Trump a platform of stochastic assassination and his removal from it elevated dialog.
I got off Twitter a month ago; unable to find the willpower I did some posts I knew would get me banned. It was good for my emotional health.
There's probably no putting the genie back in the bottle but at least these media could be regulated.
That's possible, though I don't remember it. Still, every time I seee "media is" it's jarring all over again.
I was born like this; I was over three years old before I uttered my first words, and they were a sentence. Someone/they actually gives me a headache. Not as bad as cigarette smoke or Whitney Houston, but a headache.
I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate.
"I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate."
Haha, you'll find nothing but solidarity from me on this one. I feel a twinge of pain if autocorrect confuses "your" with "you're" in a text or some such. And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct. Sadly, English is hardly a model of consistency.
"And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct."
That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular.
And that definition is wrong. Social media are not uncountable, like water; "less people" drives me nuts, coming from people who would never say "fewer water." Partitivity is very important in Russian grammar. Social media are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. One, two, three.
Look, I'm not saying that we should take a snapshot of English and never allow any changes. There have been changes in my lifetime that I don't object to, like the unsilencing of the first c is Arctic. I've grown up thinking that the participle of "get" is "gotten" but it turns out that it's actually "got" as it still is in the Commonwealth, but too many people did a palin with "forget" and now "have gotten" has become standard. The Commonwealth spelling of gray no longer evokes a red squiggle in an American spellchecker. I can deal.
But putting an adjective in front of media doesn't change the word, it's just that most Americans are morons with language (and with chat conventions this is going to get a lot worse), they *never* think before speaking, they paint themselves into corners and then get out with awful grammar.
"If someone who wants to do better in school, uh, they should study harder"
a millisecond of forethought
"People who want to do better in school should study harder."
Maybe it's my aforementioned preoccupation with clean grammar, maybe it's learning Russian at 13 and four years of German in high school, maybe it's trying to avoid words likely to make me stutter. but I've been thinking before speaking all my life and if I have ever used the singular they it had to have been when my age was single digits.
And I absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that a majority making a mistake means it is no longer a mistake. I don't care if I end up as the last person on earth using "you're." I don't care if the Oxford dictionary says "they" is a gender neutral singular (I see no point in gender neutrality anyway); dictionaries are lists of definitions, not usage guides, and only the best of them mention that "ain't" is deprecated.
Yes, I know I am going to be annoyed the rest of my life.
"That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular."
No, it's like saying that "sheep" is singular and "sheep" is plural. Or that the plural of "opus" is "opera." As you say, expecting English grammar to make perfect sense is a recipe for a lifetime of annoyance.
And no, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are social media *companies*. Social media, as a concept, is uncountable. It's really an umbrella term for the various forms of electronic communication that have sprung up in the past 20 years or so.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you not to say "social media are..." just to not have an aneurism when somebody uses the perfectly fine "social media is...".
I don't see how the phrase under discussion could possibly be singular but going in circles isn't my thing."Social media usage" is uncountable, but I think we've worn this out.
When I see "opus" it's always as "op." Sheet music is part of my daily life.
English grammar is regular as Vietnamese (all SVO, even questions) compared to some others; in Spanish and Russian "like" is intransitive, "pizza is liked by/to me," and in Russian plural begins with five, not two. In Russian there are about six ducks that have to be set in their rows; in English there is only singular vs. plural and still most people can't handle it. I'd bet money that singularity of SM was a convention born of exasperation.
I'll try not to have an aneurism. Really.
In the past week I've seen "gratefulness" and "ferociousness" on Facebook and when I responded with "gratitude" and "ferocity" I got ferociousnessally yelled at.
My first serious langrage study was Russian at 13 with enormously complicated grammar, my most recent Vietnamese with the simplest there is (no pronouns, adverbs, conjugation, declension ...). Bad grammar is almost painful to me. Scratch "almost." I'm dual-verbal and I stopped trying to be relaxed about it a long time ago.
The way I see it, every word is a contract, and if people break the contract then we cannot bridge minds at all.
BTW since "social" is an adjective, "social media" isn't a compound noun. A compound noun is, z.B., "theme park" or "home work.," two or more nouns that together mean something specific.
In Vietnamese since the number of posssible words that don't violate spelling rules is very small, there are tons of compound words and often that make no sense taken individually.
"BTW since "social" is an adjective, "social media" isn't a compound noun. A compound noun is, z.B., "theme park" or "home work.," two or more nouns that together mean something specific."
Chris, you know you can just do a quick Google search before saying things like this, right? I never begrudge people being wrong. But being wrong with such confidence is another matter.
No google. I taught English here for eight years. I am certified (TEFL). I’ve also studied six foreign languages.
A compound noun is two or more nouns, the first modifying the second like an adjective would. Adjective-noun isn’t a compound noun. Of this I am certain. There is no such thing as a social. "Society media" would be a compound noun
The books I used in teaching gave the definition I wrote. That's why I had "theme park" at my fingertips, usually it takes me a long time to think of examples. I finally pulled out "test harness," since I am working with one lately. The books were from England, if there’s a different definition in America I’m not surprised.
I just saw “invite” used as a noun in a WaPo headline. I see and hear "unique" as a synonym for "distinctive" when it means "singular."
"I taught English here for eight years. I am certified (TEFL). I’ve also studied six foreign languages."
Haha, okay, I give up. Either literally every resource on compound nouns on the internet is wrong or you are. I'll leave you to ponder which is more likely.
So can "cordial," as an alcoholic beverage. But a cordial greeting is not a compound noun.
I already said I was done with this; you go ahead and treat it as a singular and I won't jump in every time. But I'll bet you that not one American in a hundred knows that media is the plural of medium, or that it's a plural at all. Does this also apply to "news media?"
Edit: I see where the disagreement lies. I looked up a few of those internet sources and they say that a compound noun is a noun with additional *words*. That definition doesn't require the other words to be nouns. So, "big dog" would be a compound noun, as would "tall building."
I am not buying that for a second.
My understanding, reinforced by every grammar text and ESL textbook I have ever read, is that "compound noun" is what it says: a combination of two or more nouns. Theme and park are both nouns; "theme park" is a compound noun. "Social media" is an adjective and noun; "social" here is an adjective, as in Social Security, it isn't in the sense of "church social" in which it is indeed a noun.
Not everything on the Internet is correct. And with everything from less/fewer and your/you're to classical music now regarded as "elitist," hardly anyone gives a fuck about correct grammar anymore.
Well, I'm not dumbing down my résumé with "action words" and I'm not using "they" for one person. Because I do give a fuck.
Aside: I've been reminding people for years that "they" is plural; why do I have to do the same with "media?" Media is the plural of medium, where you originate your writing, Steve. What's next? "People is?" Not aimed at Steve, most people do this.
Repeat after me. Media are. Media are. Social media are. I mean, we aren't talking about complex declensions here (English doesn't have them) or reflexive verbs. We're talking about singular and plural.
There is no doubt that social media are harmful. They encourage hyperfactionalization. Yes, there was racial animus before Facebook but nothing validates a racist like seeing himself as part of a movement, something that was hard to maintain when racists had to be face to face with their fellow bigots and could see that they were a mob of losers.
Triviality reminder: there are almost no emotional controls online. You don't get facial expressions and you can shut out disagreement with a click (we all do it; no "they/them" in my browser). The MAGAts are on pages I never see and they don't see any caring sentiment.
The attempted insurrection on the Brazilian seat of government was organized on Facebook; TikTok is so aggressively shallow that unpopular kids commit suicide from it; Twitter is a cesspool of hate speech. It gave Trump a platform of stochastic assassination and his removal from it elevated dialog.
I got off Twitter a month ago; unable to find the willpower I did some posts I knew would get me banned. It was good for my emotional health.
There's probably no putting the genie back in the bottle but at least these media could be regulated.
Oh, wait. "Free speech."
"Media is the plural of medium"
Yes. But "social media" is a compound noun that can be used in both the plural and the singular. I'm pretty sure we've had this conversation before. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/social-media
That's possible, though I don't remember it. Still, every time I seee "media is" it's jarring all over again.
I was born like this; I was over three years old before I uttered my first words, and they were a sentence. Someone/they actually gives me a headache. Not as bad as cigarette smoke or Whitney Houston, but a headache.
I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate.
"I'll try not to be a pain in the ass but I've been called a grammar Nazi for calling out your for you're, which in my mind is subliterate."
Haha, you'll find nothing but solidarity from me on this one. I feel a twinge of pain if autocorrect confuses "your" with "you're" in a text or some such. And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct. Sadly, English is hardly a model of consistency.
"And yes, "media is..." wrong, but "social media is..." is correct."
That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular.
And that definition is wrong. Social media are not uncountable, like water; "less people" drives me nuts, coming from people who would never say "fewer water." Partitivity is very important in Russian grammar. Social media are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. One, two, three.
Look, I'm not saying that we should take a snapshot of English and never allow any changes. There have been changes in my lifetime that I don't object to, like the unsilencing of the first c is Arctic. I've grown up thinking that the participle of "get" is "gotten" but it turns out that it's actually "got" as it still is in the Commonwealth, but too many people did a palin with "forget" and now "have gotten" has become standard. The Commonwealth spelling of gray no longer evokes a red squiggle in an American spellchecker. I can deal.
But putting an adjective in front of media doesn't change the word, it's just that most Americans are morons with language (and with chat conventions this is going to get a lot worse), they *never* think before speaking, they paint themselves into corners and then get out with awful grammar.
"If someone who wants to do better in school, uh, they should study harder"
a millisecond of forethought
"People who want to do better in school should study harder."
Maybe it's my aforementioned preoccupation with clean grammar, maybe it's learning Russian at 13 and four years of German in high school, maybe it's trying to avoid words likely to make me stutter. but I've been thinking before speaking all my life and if I have ever used the singular they it had to have been when my age was single digits.
And I absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that a majority making a mistake means it is no longer a mistake. I don't care if I end up as the last person on earth using "you're." I don't care if the Oxford dictionary says "they" is a gender neutral singular (I see no point in gender neutrality anyway); dictionaries are lists of definitions, not usage guides, and only the best of them mention that "ain't" is deprecated.
Yes, I know I am going to be annoyed the rest of my life.
"That makes zero sense. That's like saying "people" is plural but "crazy people" is singular."
No, it's like saying that "sheep" is singular and "sheep" is plural. Or that the plural of "opus" is "opera." As you say, expecting English grammar to make perfect sense is a recipe for a lifetime of annoyance.
And no, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are social media *companies*. Social media, as a concept, is uncountable. It's really an umbrella term for the various forms of electronic communication that have sprung up in the past 20 years or so.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you not to say "social media are..." just to not have an aneurism when somebody uses the perfectly fine "social media is...".
I don't see how the phrase under discussion could possibly be singular but going in circles isn't my thing."Social media usage" is uncountable, but I think we've worn this out.
When I see "opus" it's always as "op." Sheet music is part of my daily life.
English grammar is regular as Vietnamese (all SVO, even questions) compared to some others; in Spanish and Russian "like" is intransitive, "pizza is liked by/to me," and in Russian plural begins with five, not two. In Russian there are about six ducks that have to be set in their rows; in English there is only singular vs. plural and still most people can't handle it. I'd bet money that singularity of SM was a convention born of exasperation.
I'll try not to have an aneurism. Really.
In the past week I've seen "gratefulness" and "ferociousness" on Facebook and when I responded with "gratitude" and "ferocity" I got ferociousnessally yelled at.
Doubleplusgood, eh?
;0)
Thanks to the large differences in English and Thai grammar, I have become impervious to grammatical error when not politically inspired.
My first serious langrage study was Russian at 13 with enormously complicated grammar, my most recent Vietnamese with the simplest there is (no pronouns, adverbs, conjugation, declension ...). Bad grammar is almost painful to me. Scratch "almost." I'm dual-verbal and I stopped trying to be relaxed about it a long time ago.
The way I see it, every word is a contract, and if people break the contract then we cannot bridge minds at all.
BTW since "social" is an adjective, "social media" isn't a compound noun. A compound noun is, z.B., "theme park" or "home work.," two or more nouns that together mean something specific.
In Vietnamese since the number of posssible words that don't violate spelling rules is very small, there are tons of compound words and often that make no sense taken individually.
"BTW since "social" is an adjective, "social media" isn't a compound noun. A compound noun is, z.B., "theme park" or "home work.," two or more nouns that together mean something specific."
Chris, you know you can just do a quick Google search before saying things like this, right? I never begrudge people being wrong. But being wrong with such confidence is another matter.
No google. I taught English here for eight years. I am certified (TEFL). I’ve also studied six foreign languages.
A compound noun is two or more nouns, the first modifying the second like an adjective would. Adjective-noun isn’t a compound noun. Of this I am certain. There is no such thing as a social. "Society media" would be a compound noun
The books I used in teaching gave the definition I wrote. That's why I had "theme park" at my fingertips, usually it takes me a long time to think of examples. I finally pulled out "test harness," since I am working with one lately. The books were from England, if there’s a different definition in America I’m not surprised.
I just saw “invite” used as a noun in a WaPo headline. I see and hear "unique" as a synonym for "distinctive" when it means "singular."
"I taught English here for eight years. I am certified (TEFL). I’ve also studied six foreign languages."
Haha, okay, I give up. Either literally every resource on compound nouns on the internet is wrong or you are. I'll leave you to ponder which is more likely.
Also, yes, "social" can be a noun.
So can "cordial," as an alcoholic beverage. But a cordial greeting is not a compound noun.
I already said I was done with this; you go ahead and treat it as a singular and I won't jump in every time. But I'll bet you that not one American in a hundred knows that media is the plural of medium, or that it's a plural at all. Does this also apply to "news media?"
Edit: I see where the disagreement lies. I looked up a few of those internet sources and they say that a compound noun is a noun with additional *words*. That definition doesn't require the other words to be nouns. So, "big dog" would be a compound noun, as would "tall building."
I am not buying that for a second.
My understanding, reinforced by every grammar text and ESL textbook I have ever read, is that "compound noun" is what it says: a combination of two or more nouns. Theme and park are both nouns; "theme park" is a compound noun. "Social media" is an adjective and noun; "social" here is an adjective, as in Social Security, it isn't in the sense of "church social" in which it is indeed a noun.
Not everything on the Internet is correct. And with everything from less/fewer and your/you're to classical music now regarded as "elitist," hardly anyone gives a fuck about correct grammar anymore.
Well, I'm not dumbing down my résumé with "action words" and I'm not using "they" for one person. Because I do give a fuck.