How to avoid running aground on the latin atoll

By Carl B. Strange Jr., ’79, ’85 M.Ed.

Editor, American Classical League Newsletter

Gary Larson, the cartoonist whose madcap whimsy animated cows and cow pokes, hyenas and amoebas in “The Far Side,” once put an octopus at a lectern before an audience of his peers. “Greetings, fellow octopi,” the speaker began. “Octopuses? Octopi? Dang, it’s hard to start a speech with this crowd.”

That octopedal moment of awkwardness was not unlike the confusion of some real people whose otherwise functional English literacy runs aground now and then on the mostly submerged Latin Atoll. “I’m a Carolina alumni,” you may have heard a new acquaintance say, perhaps wishing she’d said “Clemson.” As a Latin teacher, of course, I never correct anyone except my own students, and them gently; were I to have a conniption every time I hear incorrect Latin, I’d have long since been in assisted living. Besides, Anglicized Latin isn’t exactly a war crime and only needs a mild and friendly reproof.

Here’s the short course: one amoeba, two amoebae (feminine); one platypus, two platypi (masculine); one medium, two media (neuter). This explains why we see the Latin plurals syllabi, cacti, hippopotami, bacteria, errata, and curricula. Probably neuters are the most troublesome, with even erudite speakers turning out “curriculums,” “mediums,” and “stratums.” Agenda, a neuter, is already plural, making “agendas” the equivalent of “thingses to do,” which is no more wrong than “agendas” and actually sort of cute, in a Seussian way. Some of these neuters make little sense as singulars, since few epidemics can be traced to just one bacterium, and if you have only one agendum (thing to do) it would be silly to run off copies of it for everyone at a meeting.

Though Latin nouns break down into five declensions, or families, most that retain their plurals in English are First and Second. Other declensions give us index/indices but then go native with singulars error, janitor, and actor just taking on an “-s” for plural. It’s really gender, of course, that makes her an alumna and him an alumnus. Together they’re alumni, unless all are female; sororities, if they are honest, count only alumnae. I know it’s politically incorrect that masculine stands for groups of mixed gender, but so it goes for near three millennia now. My professional advice: Get used to it, and get over it. Tradition has made the terminations as immutable as gender itself, and you can’t very well be both an administrator (masculine) and an administratrix (feminine)—OK, maybe these days you can, but Latin offers no handy labeling solution for that.

The good news is that Latin enrollments have risen in this country for more than 20 years. The bad news is that many are still left out, including some who took the language years ago but were busy preening in polyester clothes and didn’t quite catch subtler nuances, such as gender and number. Unwitting manglers of Latin, they need forbearance, not reproach. Repeat a word or phrase using the correct ending, if you can manage without sounding pedantic, and the good work goes on. (“Oh, I agree entirely: Evaluating curricula is the next best thing to Novocain.” “Yes, those cacti certainly could skewer your butt.”) Nor is it wise to judge a potential user of Anglo-Latin on his credentials; I once heard the country singer Roy Clark tell an interviewer how pleasurable it was to perform for fans “in many different stadia.” Nashville must have had its syllabi straight for that student.

Next time you hear someone whining at a meeting about “hidden agendas” or gawking at the “hippopotamuses” at River-banks Zoo, feel free to enjoy the quiet satisfaction of knowing the difference, but don’t feel obligated to correct their Latin. You may find you’ve got better thingses to do.