The Vine: May 28, 2008
Dear Sars,
After long pining for it, I received Garner’s Modern American Usage for my birthday. In the entry on pronunciation, he claims that “almond” should be pronounced without the L. What is he smoking?
Confusedly,
Language Nerd Birthday Girl
Dear Lang,
Webster’s backs him up; the first pronunciation listed is “ah-mund.” I’ve always thought of “ah-mund” versus “all-mund” as regional variations, but apparently “ah-mund” is preferred. “All-mund” is listed, though, so you can use it with impunity.
The original derivation is evidently from the Latin amygdala, so Garner has a basis for claiming that the ideal pronunciation should proceed from that root — but the more recent source is from the French almande, which includes the L.
Your call. I would classify this as Garner’s opinion, not black-letter usage law.
Dear Sars,
“reduce the impact of global warming”
OR
“reduce the impacts of global warming”
I vote the first, coworker votes the second. And by vote, I mean we keep correcting it our way in the same document over and over again as we do edits. I don’t have a solid reason for voting the first, mostly I find the second reads as a typo to me.
Help?
I’ll bow to your wisdom even if you disagree with me, swears,
K
Dear K,
I abstain. I don’t think either is incorrect, but it depends on what the phrase is trying to do in context. Does the surrounding text address the overall impact of global warming? Or does it aim to give the sense that global warming has multiple impacts?
The general/overall usage, in the singular, is the one we probably see more frequently, so in the absence of other information, I guess I would recommend defaulting to that — but if the text addresses or discusses the various effects of global warming, the plural is appropriate too.
Hi Sars —
Yet another grammar question…”who” vs. “whom.” I’ve Googled it, but all the examples have been far too simplistic to be of any help. (I’m writing something for a scientific journal, and simplicity is discouraged — heh.)
“Previous research shows that African Americans, the majority of [who/whom/which] smoke menthol cigarettes, tend to start smoking later in life and smoke fewer cigarettes per day…”
I think whenever I’ve heard “the majority of x” used, it’s been “whom.” One of my co-authors wants to use which, which I think is wrong. Can you give us a verdict?
Jen
Dear Jen,
“Whom.” It’s the object of a preposition — “of,” in this case — so you need the objective case.
“Which” is not correct unless the object in question is…an object, a thing. For people, it’s “who” or “whom.” For things and stuff, it’s “which.” So, “…and smoke fewer cigarettes, the majority of which are menthols, per day” is okay, but if the object in question is African-Americans (and I think that needs a hyphen, by the way), the pronoun needs to imply that.
Tags: grammar
Re Jen’s who/whom question: Maybe my mind made this up, but isn’t there an exception, along these lines: “She would send a letter to whoever charms her best.” There’s kind of a parenthesis around “whoever charms her best,” because, if it occurred alone (and not after the preposition “to”), it would start with the subject: “I charm” (as opposed to “Me charm”), “We” vs “Us,” etc. And this prevents it from becoming “to whomever,” which would regularly be the case.
Did I make this up? Am I mistakenly conflating we/us and who/whom?
I grew up in Baltimore and have lived in DC, VA, and NY – and I have never, ever heard anyone say “ah-mund.” However, like others here, I don’t really pronounce the L very strongly, so when I say “almond” it sounds more like “awwmund” than anything else.
I have heard people use both “salmon” and “sammon”. I’m more of a “sammon” person myself.
And I have been known to use both “pee-can” and “pee-kahn.” I think “pee-can” comes naturally to me, but I always thought that “pee-kahn” was more correct so when I’m thinking about it I try to say “pee-kahn.”
@tabernacle – you’ve overthought it and confused yourself! Regardless of what modifiers you put after “whomever,” it’s still the object of the preposition. In your example, if the woman were an inveterate letter-writer and would send one to just anybody, the sentence “She would send a letter to whomever!” would be correct. That doesn’t change if she actually has standards for the recipients of her letter-writing — it just means you’ve got a longer prepositional phrase than you did before.
@Jen – Thanks for the reply, esme. This is the idea I (so clumsily) attempted to convey (though my grasp was more intuitive than what follows, which is pretty formal).
First an example: “to whoever broke into my car”:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/openletters/7brokeintocar.html
Then an actual explanation: http://web.ku.edu/~edit/whom.html
Which contains more examples: “I decided to vote for whoever called me first.” and
“Give it to whoever deserves it. “
Is there a chance that the ah-mund/al-mund thing is a case of whether knowledge of the world passed to someone orally or in writing? If at some point someone in a family had never heard the thing (if the direct oral tradition had died out, so to speak) and then read it – al-mund seems logical. Where there was a lot of usage in each generation, the common pronunciation of the times would pass unaltered. How many of us carry around embarrassing pronunciations from catholic tastes in reading as young kids (super-floo’ us leaps to mind…)? Just an idea.
ok sorry – meant ‘knowledge of the word’ – not ‘world’… Need more coffee.