When Gilbert Sanchez was president of Highlands University, his office routinely presented some attractive lapel pins to employees who had also graduated from there. That included a large number of us.<\/p>\n
When I received mine, I asked Sanchez whether I needed to share it with another, my wife maybe. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, the pin has the word \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcalumni.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
So? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, alumni means more than one,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I answered. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s those pesky words of Latin or Greek origin that confuse us English, non-Latin, non-Greek speakers. Those words, with their inflectional endings require us to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gymnasia\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for more than one gymnasium, or \u00e2\u20ac\u201d better yet \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a gym. Period.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easier to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cactuses\u00e2\u20ac\u009d than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cacti.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And, on the subject of strange endings, the city of Emporia, Kan., means just a bunch of large stores. And Des Moines means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153some monks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s French; let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stick to Latin and Greek. Even in the august academic setting of Highlands University, we still hear people asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What is the criteria?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As we (should) know, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153criteria\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is plural, and it should be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153criterion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d unless we wish to recast the sentence and ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are the criteria?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Asked if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m an alumni of Highlands, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m tempted to answer, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, I are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But really, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m an alumnus and my wife is an alumna.<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still not out of the woods. When someone says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an alumnus of Highlands, I want to ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When did you graduate?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But not so fast. Even though many believe that alumnus identifies a graduate, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not necessarily the case. An alumnus can be anyone who merely attended college, even for a short while.<\/p>\n
I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t broach that little factoid to the alumni-pin-awarding Sanchez, back in 1990, as I noticed his supply was low, and to provide one to every alumnus might have been a tad expensive.<\/p>\n
Even in newspaper writing, we often see the use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alum,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a lazy way of avoiding the dictionary. So, to review: alumni means more than one, generally males but mixed doubles are acceptable; alumnus means one, usually a male graduate; alumna stands for a female graduate, and \u00e2\u20ac\u201d get this \u00e2\u20ac\u201d alumnae means more than one female.<\/p>\n
Notice there are a number of license plate frames bearing a university name and the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alumni.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And since alumni is a plural form, the frame ought to be attached only to two-seater autos or bicycles built for two.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s move on. Is this argument getting ridiculous? No, these arguments are becoming ridiculi.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
More people are finding caches of Wite-Out to help me insert a missing comma from the new Highlands license plates. The latest offer came from Wendy Quintana, an assistant in the University Public Information Department. She claims to have all the correction fluid I need. With rain and hail pelting the plate during our monsoon season, I expect to become supplicant on many occasions. I hope Wendy really has enough of the stuff.<\/p>\n
When I got my Highlands plate, I placed it under the dealer license frame, then summoned my boss, David Giuliani, to admire the handiwork. Well, neither \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Go Cowboys\u00e2\u20ac\u009d nor \u00e2\u20ac\u0153New Mexico Highlands\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was visible, their having been obscured by the thick borders of the dealer frame.<\/p>\n
So I replaced the frame, and now all is in plain sight.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
We used to have a teacher at Highlands who would slip a plastic frame over our term papers. If even one character on any page jutted into the frame, that meant a failing grade. Sure, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great to have strict standards, but many of us students in that class reasoned that the prof didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really care how well or poorly we wrote \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as long as we used wide-enough margins.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cache,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pronounced \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cash,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d often refers to a stashed, sometimes hidden, quantity of money, jewels, ammunition or drugs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cache\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not pronounced \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cashay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and certainly not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sashay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which we heard last week on local radio.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
A friend e-mailed me a list of common expressions, from an Internet language site, ArcaMax. How many you can identify?<\/p>\n
Submit your answers to my e-mail address by Monday noon, and feel free to add your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Gilbert Sanchez was president of Highlands University, his office routinely presented some attractive lapel pins to employees who had also graduated from there. That included a large number of us. When I received mine, I asked Sanchez whether I needed to share it with another, my wife maybe. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, the pin has the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}