Grammar and Words

The English language is a potpourri of foreign words whose sources vary from Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and Swahili and others original to our vocabulary. For snobs these imports have become a way to sound pretentious (make that dumb), and who prefer a foreign substitute to one English, a cheap way to sound cute. In particular, classical music aficianados like tacking the Latin and Italian “i” and dropping the plural “s” from concertos and sonatas, preferring sonati and concerti. And so with other english plurals like hippopotamuses to hippopotami, tomatoes to tomati, cactuses to cacti but stopping (wisely) with potatoes to potati. I will concede, however, to keeping fungi (mushrooms) – as is and not funguses and for reasons purely culinary, I guess, because eating funguses sounds grotesque.