to have less and less faith in DS teacher

[OrlandoWoolf]

He has to find some plurals for his spelling test.
Either she's being really clever or she does not actually know.

Dice

As she "has form" on homework mistakes and spelling errors - I suspect she does not know the mistake she's made.

[Donki]

Another family that uses "die" for the singular....

[FredFredGeorge]

Homophones that aren't homophones!!! Now you're not only attacking my grammar but my pronunciation too ;-)

Isn't one of the important lessons that parents need to teach their children is that no-one in any place of authority is right - teachers don't know everything, everyone can make mistakes etc. Being critical about mistakes and lack of knowledge is completely different to being critical of the person, although yes it can be difficult.

LifeHuh is cumnavigate some sort of method of avoiding semen during a sexual act? Maybe cir prefixes that in some strange etymology?

[fedupandfifty]

In fairness, I don't think this teacher bashing. I think the op is entitled, as a teacher herself, to expect similar standards from a teacher. The example of die/ dice is perhaps a bit obscure for some, but surely the point of being a teacher is to research the topic s/he is supposed to be teaching?

[LifeHuh]

LifeHuh is cumnavigate some sort of method of avoiding semen during a sexual act? Maybe cir prefixes that in some strange etymology?

and being a bit slow I had to read that more than once - my first reaction was I didn't type "cumnavigate",did I?
That'd be a really suitable homework for Year 3 then!!

Reminds me of "He's living incognito - Cognito is a small village in South America..." (or whatever the actual quote is...!)

[OrlandoWoolf]

True - but if you think die is the singular and you think dice is a plural, then it looks strange having the word dice as a singular.

[harticus]

No one uses die as the singular for dice in real life

Er.... we do.

[harticus]

Also pedantic about cannon for singular and plural.

[OrlandoWoolf]

Like I said, I was always taught die was the singular of dice.

I have taught that in my class. No one ever taught me that dice could also mean a single die

I must have missed the memo.

[WhereDoAllTheCalculatorsGo]

Why on earth would somebody say 'no one uses die for the singular anymore'? Of course they fucking do, because that's what they are called.

[LiegeAndLief]

Hang on, there are loads of people who use data as a plural word. They're called scientists. If I'm reviewing something where someone has written "the data shows" or "the data is", I correct it!

I also correct misuse of apostrophes and commas. Now that I think about it, I am clearly a pedant and my colleagues probably all hate me.

[FredFredGeorge]

LiegeAndLief the controversy is if data can be used as a singular, not as a plural, some people think it's only plural.

Can I be a pedant and point out none of you are pedants if you're correcting language, language doesn't have a correct form, so you cannot be pedantic about it surely?

[Pixel]

We use 'die' here, as in 'the die is cast'.

[BalloonSlayer]

"circus" (related to words like circumference but as far as I know "cir" isn't a prefix.Someone is going to tell me I'm wrong now ,aren't they

Umm well it's the "circ" bit I think you need to be looking at.

Without googling anything at all, AFAIK a "circus" is something round, eg Piccadilly Circus, a circle is round, a circumference is the measurement around the edge of a circle, you circumnavigate something by going around it. It's not hard to work out that the prefix Circ- denotes something round.

And who was it mentioned "dices potatoes" FGS? That's a VERB, not a plural noun. < gimme strength >

[Taz1212]

I just checked and both my DS(11) and DD(8) knew what the singular of dice was so it appears I am being successful in my mission to pass pedanticism to the next generation.

[perfectview]

Don't get me started on 'stadiums'

BBC I am looking at you.

[FredFredGeorge]

BalloonSlayer circ is not a prefix in the word circus because it doesn't modify the word us.

circum is a common prefix for around - used in circumnavigate, circumcision, circumvent, circumscribe etc. and yes it's completely connected to circus (which is just from ring/circle) but it's not a prefix.

Stadia vs Stadiums you appear to be losing that one perfectview

[harticus]

Plurals of uncountable nouns drive me mad.
'Accommodations' being the worst.

[perfectview]

Fredfredgeorge - don't I know it!

[OrlandoWoolf]

We've done chateau as chateaux.

[SE13Mummy]

My 8-year-old and 4-year-old regularly tell me it is die if there's only one. I've no idea who they've been talking to as neither DH or I call it a die and DH is a pedant usually.

On the other hand, a worryingly high proportion of my Y6 class believe that the plural of sheep is sheeps or sheepis .

[LifeHuh]

Yes FredFredGeorge! That was my point exactly! Circle and circus are related words,but the actual prefix used in English,which is what the children were learning about,is "circum"
Perfectly happy with circumflex,circumnavigate,circumference...but not circus.
Or circle. Actually while I accept "cir" may be a greek prefix denoting round,I think teaching Yr 3 British children using that is nuts - as it will be absolutely no help to them in RL.Some of the other words were similiar in that they were words from Latin,with a Latin prefix - but not useful when looking at English usage...

[LifeHuh]

This is some of the homework,stored at the time for future irritation. Knew it was worse that just circle... (sorry OP,I'm feeling pain on the whole dice/die thing as well!)

A list of word to sort into boxes by beginning or ending - the implication being that these are the prefix or suffix.
One of these words is subtraction-suffix 'tion',I'm happy with that.But we also have words ending in 'ough'(enough),'ial'(special) and station(to go in the suffix 'tion' box).
At the other end we have the prefix 'a'and ,amongst other word,'again'.

Surely prefixes and suffixes do not cover any group of letters which can end or begin a word?(so not 'ough'etc,and ,in english, what about the 'as'at the beginning of ascend?)

Ooh,it annoyed me like stink at the time and it is annoying me all over again now!

[chocoluvva]

It's amazing how quickly language changes - take the singular of 'rice' for example. Does anyone still use 'rye' as the singular? Do they heck - they crack into the ryvita without a thought for the ramifications. Hardly anyone over the age of forty uses rice-cakes these days.




(Apologies - I'm in a very silly mood).

[Talkinpeace]

Choose your battles.
Save energy for the things that really matter.