N.Mhonchan Shitiri
Wokha
English, with five hundred thousand words or more is an accumulation of gathered words from languages around the world and is still evolving.
And to say that, glasnost and perestroika both meaning an open, democratic political system and the policy of political and economic change that president Gorbachev introduced in the Soviet Union in the19 80s has become English catchwords. Here are some examples of such gathered words or roots;
Former students of a particular school, college, university getting together is often referred to as alumni association or union. But literary alumnus (pl. alumni) is a gender root of Latin origin meaning past pupil and denotes for a male past student and its feminine gender is alumna (pl. alumnae). So appropriate usage is to say he or she is alumnus or alumna of that particular institution and getting together as past pupil union. But Alumni union is generally used and is accepted in our context.
Agenda is a Latin word meaning list of things to be done and is formally spoken and written in its plural form but if it is to be used in its singular form it is agendum. Data which is the plural form of Latin datum in scientific use is treated as a plural noun taking a plural verb. However, in everyday use data is often treated as a singular noun which is also widely accepted.
Another common usage is corrigendum ( pl. corrigenda) meaning corrected error and is especially used as a print list of corrected errors at the beginning of a book. And cf to corrigendum is erratum (pl. errata) meaning error in printing or writing. And cp to this is addendum (pl. addenda) meaning extra information added to a book, document or speech. All these roots are of Latin origin with slight usage differences and can be used according to the scope and intent of the writer.
To avoid distinction between men and women doing the same job, feminine suffixes – ess and –ette are frequently avoided these days and instead of writing manageress or usherette , common to both sexes as manager, usher or author can be used. Likewise, use of alternative word is sometimes possible. For instance, instead of chairman or chairwoman, chairperson can be used as also headmaster or headmistress as head teacher.
Titles, degrees, honours have become status tags in our society but formally and officially there is a usage. To name some, a person qualified to practice medicine and perform surgery and who is under the Hippocratic Oath can officially write doctor or for that matter a person having bachelor’s degree in engineering can write engineer as prefix to one’s name or an ordained minister as reverend. And a scholar who has obtained doctor of philosophy as PhD and so forth. And such titles and degrees once earned can be used for ever as colonel Coleman, retired General Officer commanding or Mr. Smith IAS , retired Secretary to the Government. But informally there is no such thumb rule to say that one cannot use such titles , degrees or not. Our present chief secretary is an electrical engineer by profession but he hardly appends his degree/title.
And also logos, insignia, name plates, flags, letter heads and symbols are also being randomly used and in most instances are misused or abused. But such usages are reserved and revered and are not for common man’s usages and can only be used after being authorized by a competent authority.
English, the language of England as a means of global interactions is being used with variations both in written and spoken form. For an Englishman will write programme, and an American program and we use hotchpotch (Amer. hodgepodge) English and we can write both. Herein lies the diversity and flexibility in the usage of English and so prone to errors as well.
