"News" Singular or Plural"
rpbprb
The news of Washington is about an American city..
The news of Washington are about an American city.
Now to make my question even more interesting, perhaps, what about the
following? Which is correct?
The news of Washington and New York is about two American cities.
The news of Washington and New York are about two American cities.
Thanks.
Eric Walker
Despite some variations in earlier times, "news" (in the sense
of "information") has been purely a singular noun for at least
a century.
Also: the preposition you want in those examples is not likely
to be "of". One can use "of" in forms such as "Is there any
news of his fate?" or "There is no news of the outcome"; the
form "news of" usually implies that the news concerns some
relatively narrow category or particular topic.
News that originates, literally or metaphorically, in a given
place is usually said as "the news from Washington" or
whatever. When the news being discussed is about a quite broad
topic, it is "the news concerning" or "the news about" or some
such form; if it is completely general (meaning everything that
someone thinks is of interest, with no set topic) it is just
"the news": "Let's watch the 6:00 p.m. news on television."
So, in a sense, the sample sentences you provide, even with the
correct number used--
The news of Washington is about an American city.
The news of Washington and New York is about two
American cities.
--are essentially tautological:
The news about Washington is about an American city.
The news about Washington and New York is about two
American cities.
(Although that last could mean news about some single topic,
understood by the reader or listener, that concerns both
Washington and New York--say, for example, a sports event
between teams from those two cities).
Those are guidelines, not rigorous rules. Determining the
idiomatically normal preposition in a given usage is, at least
in English, one of the trickiest matters going.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker
My opinions on English are available at
http://owlcroft.com/english/
rpbprb
Thanks for the comprehensive response. Much appreciated.
"Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.individual.net...
rewboss
1pR4b.5277$NF5....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
> Which of these sentences is correct, please?
>
> The news of Washington is about an American city..
> The news of Washington are about an American city.
Further to Eric's reply, it's worth pointing out that there have been
several self-appointed authorities who tried to insist that "news" was
plural -- "The news are good". In one sense they are right -- or at least,
not completely wrong -- because "news" does mean "new things"[*] (cf French
"les nouvelles", Russian "novosti", both related to the Latin for "new"; and
German "die Nachrichten", literally meaning "the messages").
However, English has a track record of taking plural nouns and turning them
into mass nouns, among them "graffiti", "ravioli" and "spaghetti" -- all of
which are plural in the original Italian, but considered mass nouns in
English, and therefore singular: "That spaghetti was very nice", not "*Those
spaghetti were..."
To refer to one unit of these things, we English speakers have to resort to
adding another noun: we talk about "an item of news" or "a strand of
spaghetti", for example. "Good evening, and here is the news", but: "Here
are a few late items of news".
Another word which has just about gone the same way, this time from Latin,
is "data", although -- as we have discussed on the group before -- in
certain technical contexts, it's still "one datum", "several data". But in
everyday conversation, I would tend to say, "The data is corrupt", or "I
have hundreds of pieces of data on this disk".
[*] There is an urban myth -- a very old one -- that "news" is an acronym
for "north, east, west, south". But that's what it is: an urban myth with no
evidence to support it.
Larry Trask
> However, English has a track record of taking plural nouns and turning them
> into mass nouns, among them "graffiti", "ravioli" and "spaghetti" -- all of
> which are plural in the original Italian, but considered mass nouns in
> English, and therefore singular: "That spaghetti was very nice", not "*Those
> spaghetti were..."
Well, 'ravioli' and 'spaghetti', yes, and countless other Italian
culinary plurals. But I wonder about 'graffiti'. I don't have a
corpus to consult, but it seems to me that the plural use of this word
is still very frequent. And my Collins dictionary, for what that's
worth, gives the plural use as the norm, with the singular use
confined to an "also" note.
By the way, I ran into this not long ago in the newspaper: "a
paparazzi". How does this strike everybody? It almost lifted me out
of my seat.
Larry Trask
lar...@sussex.ac.uk
Daniel James
news:<519d8f2c.03090...@posting.google.com>, Larry
> By the way, I ran into this not long ago in the newspaper:
> "a paparazzi". How does this strike everybody? It almost
> lifted me out of my seat.
Ugh, bad - but what do you expect where paparazzi are
concerned.
I saw a sandwich bar advertising "paninis" the other day (and I
have often observed that when one orders "panini" one usually
receives only one).
Cheers,
Daniel.
Mark Wallace
I unthinkingly asked for a 'panino' in a sandwich bar over here (one which
advertises that it sells "everyday fresh sandwiches", but I wasn't feeling
very fussy), and they looked at me as if I were weird -- for the wrong
reason, obviously, or it wouldn't be much of a story.
--
Mark Wallace
-----------------------------------------------------
For the intelligent approach to nasty humour, visit:
The Anglo-American Humour (humor) Site
http://earth.prohosting.com/mwal/
-----------------------------------------------------
rewboss
bj7ocl$g6o4c$1...@ID-51325.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Daniel James wrote:
> > In article
> > news:<519d8f2c.03090...@posting.google.com>, Larry
> > Trask wrote:
> >> By the way, I ran into this not long ago in the newspaper:
> >> "a paparazzi". How does this strike everybody? It almost
> >> lifted me out of my seat.
> >
> > Ugh, bad - but what do you expect where paparazzi are
> > concerned.
> >
> > I saw a sandwich bar advertising "paninis" the other day (and I
> > have often observed that when one orders "panini" one usually
> > receives only one).
>
> I unthinkingly asked for a 'panino' in a sandwich bar over here (one which
> advertises that it sells "everyday fresh sandwiches", but I wasn't feeling
> very fussy), and they looked at me as if I were weird -- for the wrong
> reason, obviously, or it wouldn't be much of a story.
Well, words do get changed to fit into the language they have been adopted
into. It usually takes time, but it happens eventually. I doubt if anyone
would object to pronouncing the final "s" in "restaurants", or making the
plural of "piano" "pianos". Does any native English speaker talk about
various leitmotive in the different operi he has recently studied? How many
espressi do you normally drink in a week, and can anyone remember the time
when there were 100 kopecki to the rouble, or 100 pfennige to the
deutschmark?
mUs1Ka
> Mark Wallace <mwal...@dse.nl> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
> bj7ocl$g6o4c$1...@ID-51325.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > Daniel James wrote:
> > > In article
> > > news:<519d8f2c.03090...@posting.google.com>, Larry
> > > Trask wrote:
> > >> By the way, I ran into this not long ago in the newspaper:
> > >> "a paparazzi". How does this strike everybody? It almost
> > >> lifted me out of my seat.
> > >
> > > Ugh, bad - but what do you expect where paparazzi are
> > > concerned.
> > >
> > > I saw a sandwich bar advertising "paninis" the other day (and I
> > > have often observed that when one orders "panini" one usually
> > > receives only one).
> >
> > I unthinkingly asked for a 'panino' in a sandwich bar over here (one
which
> > advertises that it sells "everyday fresh sandwiches", but I wasn't
feeling
> > very fussy), and they looked at me as if I were weird -- for the wrong
> > reason, obviously, or it wouldn't be much of a story.
>
> Well, words do get changed to fit into the language they have been adopted
> into. It usually takes time, but it happens eventually. I doubt if anyone
> would object to pronouncing the final "s" in "restaurants", or making the
> plural of "piano" "pianos". Does any native English speaker talk about
That would be opere (feminine plural) except, I believe, opera is already
the plural of opus.
m.
Raymond S. Wise
Then there is the word "forte," about which a discussion has been going on
over in alt.usage.english in the last few days. It does not have the
spelling of the French equivalent noun, "fort," and none of the standard
pronunciations follows the pronunciation of the French word, which is,
roughly, "for."
I've mentioned before that the word "avoirdupois" has that "du," a change
from the previous "de," was "introduced by some ignorant 'improver.'" as the
OED2 etymology puts it. The OED2 etymology for "forte" says "As in many
other adoptions of Fr. adjs. used as sbs., the fem. form has been ignorantly
substituted for the masc.; cf. _locale, morale_ (of an army), etc."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Mark Wallace
It is 'opere' ("operi" are workers, colloquially, or elements of
mathematical equations).
I'm not complaining about the 'panini/panini' thing; it just was completely
natural for me to ask for "one panino", so the error was mine, really.
Like they say: "When not in Rome..."
rewboss
vlf30fi...@corp.supernews.com...
> Then there is the word "forte," about which a discussion has been going on
> over in alt.usage.english in the last few days. It does not have the
> spelling of the French equivalent noun, "fort," and none of the standard
> pronunciations follows the pronunciation of the French word, which is,
> roughly, "for."
Isn't "forte" Italian?
Mark Wallace
That would appear to be where the argument falls down.
Raymond S. Wise
Well, the one I was talking about is English. :-)
There are two words spelled "forte," which are given separate entries in
English dictionaries. Both derive ultimately from Latin, one through
Italian--that's the musical term--and one through French. The French term,
as I pointed out in my previous post, is a respelled version of the French
noun "fort"--the same word which gave us the military term "fort." The
pronunciations "FOR-tee," "FOR-tay," and "for-TAY" are thought to have
resulted from the influence of the Italian word "forte." The following is
from a recent post I made to alt.usage.english :
[quote]
It startled me to see what the OED2 had for the pronunciation (IPA
represented by ASCII IPA--I've kept the colon representing vowel length):
"/'fO:ti/, /'fO:teI/, formerly /fO:t/." I'm not startled by the
non-rhoticity, of course, but by the reference to the monosyllabic
pronunciation as being used "formerly," with at least the implication that
it is no longer used.
[end quote]
A poster responding to that message said that the monosyllabic pronunciation
of "forte" is now unknown in the UK.
Dr Robin Bignall
It's the feminine version of the French adjective 'strong'.
Rocco Forte is of Italian extraction, and is the son (or grandson?) of the
founder of the hotel chain Fortes in the UK. He left that company and has
recently formed a new group.
http://www.roccofortehotels.com/indexf.html
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Quiet part of Hertfordshire
England
rewboss
> "rewboss" <rew...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:bj9vhq$gfoqj$2...@ID-185204.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > Raymond S. Wise <illinoi...@mninter.net> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
> > vlf30fi...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > > Then there is the word "forte," about which a discussion has been
going
> on
> > > over in alt.usage.english in the last few days. It does not have the
> > > spelling of the French equivalent noun, "fort," and none of the
standard
> > > pronunciations follows the pronunciation of the French word, which is,
> > > roughly, "for."
> >
> > Isn't "forte" Italian?
>
>
> Well, the one I was talking about is English. :-)
>
> There are two words spelled "forte," which are given separate entries in
> English dictionaries. Both derive ultimately from Latin, one through
> Italian--that's the musical term--and one through French. The French term,
> as I pointed out in my previous post, is a respelled version of the French
> noun "fort"--the same word which gave us the military term "fort." The
> pronunciations "FOR-tee," "FOR-tay," and "for-TAY" are thought to have
> resulted from the influence of the Italian word "forte."
Not necessarily respelled -- it could be the feminine form. In the same way,
we use the feminine form "naive" instead of "naif", even when referring to
males.
Eric Walker
[...]
>In the same way, we use the feminine form "naive" instead of
>"naif", even when referring to males.
I was going to say something about how, despite that, we seem
to keep the form "naif" for the noun, only to be shocked by the
discovery that I could not find "naif" as a noun in the OED. I
know that I have seen the word in print--I wouldn't know of its
existence else--often enough to regard it (used to signify a
naive--or naif--person) as perhaps chi-chi but certainly not
rare; its absence from the OED puzzles me.
Curiously, now I come to think on it, I have never seen "naive"
used as a noun, and--as best I recall--rightly, for all the
naifs of my reading experience were, I believe, male. I wonder
if authors simply avoid the use when "naive" would be the noun,
or if they by and large nourish the belief that women are far
less often naive than men are naif. . . .
Martin Ambuhl
> I was going to say something about how, despite that, we seem
> to keep the form "naif" for the noun, only to be shocked by the
> discovery that I could not find "naif" as a noun in the OED.
It is very strange that the OED doesn't have it, given the following from
the COD(10):
naif /nVI"i;f, nA;"i;f/
· adj. naive.
· n. a naive person.
– ORIGIN from Fr. naïf.
--
Martin Ambuhl
Mark Wallace
Or, conversely, using 'bimbo' when talking of a girl.
Raymond S. Wise
news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.individual.net...
The word "naďf/naif" is in other dictionaries. If you are using a CD or Web
version of the OED, try doing a search for "naďf." It might be sensitive to
the use of the letter with the diacritic. The AHD4 appears to be sensitive
in the opposite way: If I do a search for "naďf," it returns results for
"na," but if I search for "naif" it turns up the word, with "naďf" (to be
precise, it's printed as "na·ďf" to show the syllabication) given as a
variant form.
Eric Walker
>"Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
>news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.individual.net...
[...]
>> I was going to say something about how, despite that, we
>> seem to keep the form "naif" for the noun, only to be
>> shocked by the discovery that I could not find "naif" as a
>> noun in the OED. . . .
>
>The word "naïf/naif" is in other dictionaries. If you are
>using a CD or Web version of the OED, try doing a search for
>"naïf." It might be sensitive to the use of the letter with
>the diacritic. . . .
I am using the two-volume "Compact" edition, and find "naif"
(with the diacritical mark) readily enough, but only given as
an adjective. I have just examined the entry again, and still
cannot find even a cross-reference to a noun form. Curious.
(I also checked the Supplement, to no avail.)