Competent speakers

Lately I have realized a recurring phenomenon amongst my students. Whenever I mention the fact that a particular structure or expression can be used in two or three different ways, I observe a distinct knee-jerk reaction. Invariably, some student will ask me: "So, which one is correct?" That's when I reply that "there is no correct expression." At this some of my students look utterly flummoxed. How is that possible? How can a word have two different plural forms? Of course, there is a number of reasons why this can happen: different registers, regularization processes, dialectal divergence, etc.

Even when there is an evidently "correct" (i.e. standard) form and an "incorrect" (i.e. nonstandard) version, things are not necessarily black and white. Thus Bill Withers, the author of the soul classic Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone, would not have uttered the sentence "ain't no doubt in my mind" during a TV interview. Most likely he would have said "there is no doubt in my mind." The same speaker that uses a "correct" verb form in the interview chooses the "incorrect" one for the song. So there's that.

Then we come up against another problem. Something that is "incorrect" today may be "correct" tomorrow. Yes... I could get really technical and discuss the concept of diachronical continuum, but, for the sake of clarity, let's just say that language transformation is a slow process and changes do not occur overnight. That explains how it is perfectly possible for different options to be available at the same time. Whatever non-linguists tell you, the truth is that, before a linguistic novelty (i.e. a new/modified expression) becomes established, it coexists with the older form for a few decades or even generations. That phenomenon is called linguistic variation. Of course, at first, the "novelty" is deemed to be an outright mistake. With the passage of time, though, the "wrong" expression starts to feel rather "normal". Eventually, the "correct" one sounds dated and is abandoned. That's how changes take place. Therefore sentences such as "I'm seeing", "I'm hearing" or even "I'm loving it", which were frowned upon in the 1980s, are gradually becoming acceptable now. Is it okay to say "I'm loving this book"? Well... it depends.

Words of foreign origin

In Spain we find the case of "real classical Latin" and what I call "Spanish Latin". Established Spanish writers will use the expression in flagrante, which happens to be the classical formula used by the Romans (the full phrase being in flagrante delicto). However, the prestigious Diccionario de la Real Academia sanctions the use of the corrupt form in fraganti. Notice that erroneous first syllable: "fra". For reasons that need not be described, in Spain the word underwent a shocking transformation. Is "fraganti" classical Latin? I'm afraid it's not.  It's dog Latin. The difference between flagrante and fraganti reminds me of that kid I met in the US, whose name was Grabiel. Yes. Grabiel. The kid insisted that his name was not Gabriel but GRAbiel. An obvious mistake had been made (unsurprisingly, his parents happened to be uneducated immigrants), but of course nobody made him change his name. In a similar way, "incorrect" Latin expressions made their way into the Spanish (a grosso modo, de motu propio, etc.) and have managed to stay in the language, because most people were okay with them.

Why do I mention all this? Because an ancient tongue is kind of swampy terrain and different modern languages adapt loanwords in different ways. That's why we find Latin words with two possible plurals in English. Take a word that I used above: the technical term "continuum". What is its plural? Continuums or continua? If you get ahold of a copy of The Power of Babel (2001) and turn to page 81 you will see that Professor John McWhorter uses continua. So is continua is the correct plural?

Let me think. My favorite dictionary, the one and only Merriam Webster, also accepts the regularized version continuums. So, again... which one is "correct"? The answer is both and, since we find this trend across the board, there's hardly any need to panic. Sometimes several alternatives are grammatical.

Foreign plurals

What I just explained is not an isolated example. As a matter of fact, in the case of foreign plurals we usually tend to find two options. The Italian word paparazzo only has one acceptable plural: paparazzi, but Hebrew terms such as kibutz and goy can take both the original plural (kibutzim and goyim) and the regularized versions (kibutzes and goys). The same thing is true for certain Latin words: ultimatum and curriculum offer two plurals. Nevertheless, that is not the case of other Latin terms. Alumnus and bacterium, for example, only accept the "original" plurals, namely, alumni and bacteria. Don't ask me why. I don't make the rules. Ultimately, whenever you have two options, using one form or the other boils down to a choice. That's when the concept of style comes into play. I'll say it again. Not grammatical correctness but... style.

Style

Ask yourself: Do you say stupidest or the most stupid? Do you say if an astronaut takes his or her cat? or do you say their cat? Do you say the majority of people thinks or the majority of people think? The by-the-book correct expression is, of course, thinks (since the head of the noun phrase is majority), but the ad sensum use calls for "think" because it's the people (a plural noun) that do the thinking. In the first paragraph of this post I wrote "there is a number of reasons...". Well, that is my choice. Someone else could have chosen "there are a number of reasons". I know. I know. Some grammar sticklers will tell you that only the first one is correct and many teachers will mark the second option wrong. That said, there are solid reasons to justify either choice.

Not anything goes

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that obviously ungrammatical sentences can be justified on the grounds of "personal style". As is the case of so-called eggcorns and malaprops, a mistake is a mistake (even though languages are chock-full of embarrassing blunders that then go on to become official). Case in point: I abhor an atrocity like "I was literally petrified". Really. It makes my skin crawl (not literally), but I can accept that some speakers spell "chock-full" like me (with a hyphen) while others favor "chockfull" (without the hyphen). As far as I'm concerned both are acceptable and that's fine.

So, at this point you may be wondering... "What do I do if I'm not sure what to say?" If you want my advice: follow competent speakers and make sure you imitate expressions that are in reputable use. By "competent speakers" I refer to writers like Ian McEwan or Joyce Carol Oates, intellectuals like Steven Pinker or Sam Harris, actors like Stephen Fry or Emma Thompson... They are all exceedingly eloquent speakers whose mastery in English I definitely look up to. Dictionaries can also be helpful, of course.

Every now and then it is okay to be persnickety in terms of grammatical correctness but don't push it. Most of the times, things are not black or white. Indeed, there are many shades of "gray" or... wait a second. Is it "gray", with an A, or should I spell it "grey" with an E?