Thursday, July 27, 2006

Why is it that when you have less than one of something, that something becomes plural? What do I mean? Well if you have 2 apples sitting on your desk, the apples is plural (you have MORE than 1) with an ‘s.’ This is obviously correct. If you have one apple down your pants, the apple is singular, because, well you only have a single apple (and I am talking apples here, not nuts). But if suddenly you discover that you have 0.5 apples up your sleeve, you are back to using the plural form, apples. Why? Physically you have less than one apple, but Grammar says you do not (apparently Grammar ain’t no math wiz (but that’s okay because Math don’t know squat ‘bout grammar.). To throw a nice little monkey wrench in the mix, if you rephrase your statement to say you have half an apple in your eye (which may cause you significant pain and inflammation) you’re back to using the singular for of apple, but only because you placed the single identifier (an) in front of the word apple. If you only have 0.159 apples baked in a pie (which I don’t think would taste very good for an apple pie), who is going to want to say, “My pie only uses one hundred fifty nine thousandths of an apple!” when you can say, “point one five nine” instead? Most people can't even do that kind of math!

4 comments:

DMM said...

You have way to much time on your hands. I mean really, who sits around and thinks of this stuff?

Andy said...

Clearly, someone without a three year old.

Lindsay said...

You're life isn't so bad. Don't listen to them! You play volleyball & have weird thoughts about numbers & colors...its just all leading up to your "secret" plan!!

And just so you know, I changed my web address so change my link your site, http://lindsaysboringblog.blogspot.com

DMM said...

Andy - You're right. But if I didn't have a 3 year old I still wouldn't find the time to think of this stuff. But you gotta love James for it!

Dar