Originally Posted By: Waterdoctor
Unusual plurals?

How about we first learn the correct use of common plurals??

I still get upset when they say "the news is...", "the data is in..."

And regarding pronouncing the Latin plural --ae: I fear that the old Romans would not have understood us.

Alexa Fleckenstein M.D., physician, author.


News is a mass singular. Data is often a mass singular. We're not liable to run into many old Romans to misunderstand us. The pronunciation of AE in Latin changed during the Middle Ages.

I ran a Google ngram on 'the news is' vs. 'the news are'. I was surprised at the high frequency of the latter.