[Grammar] Phenomenon/phenomena

[Sartre]

Sentence taken from an article:

"Alas, there’s no escaping how American this Trump phenomena is."

According to Microsoft Word, "phenomena" must be replaced with phenomenon, in the above example. Is plural wrong in this context?
Because, it seems to me, if phenomena was replaced by any other word it would be singular.

 

[Rover_KE]

You are right. It should be phenomenon.

 

[GoesStation]

In AmE, phenomena is frequently used for both the singular and the plural.

 

[jutfrank]

In AmE, phenomena is frequently used for both the singular and the plural.

Really? Consciously? By whom?

 

[GoesStation]

Really? Consciously? By whom?

I'm pretty certain phenomena is much more common for the singular than phenomenon for the large majority of those Americans who use the word. These are evidently people who never learned that the latter is the singular in Greek.

 

[emsr2d2]

Lots of people use "phenomena" as the singular in BrE too. Usually, they simply don't know that "phenomenon" is the correct singular form. It's the same as people using "data" instead of "datum".

 

[jutfrank]

I couldn't agree more with emsr2d2 above. Just because lots of people don't know that it's wrong doesn't make it right! It goes back to the old descriptive/prescriptive issue. We EFL teachers are not expected to describe what people do say -- that's for linguists and lexicographers -- but to advise on what people should say (or rather what we think they want to say).

 

[GoesStation]

Lots of people use "phenomena" as the singular in BrE too. Usually, they simply don't know that "phenomenon" is the correct singular form. It's the same as people using "data" instead of "datum".

My father is a retired academic who is among the very few to insist that data is plural. He also persists in pronouncing router like "rooter", explaining that the 99.9% of the population who pronounce it like "pouter" are wrong.

I enjoy the mild eccentricity of treating data as plural, but I certainly don't waste any enamel on tooth-gnashing when I hear nearly everyone else use it as a singular mass noun. I confess that my teeth suffer a bit when I hear phenomena as a singular noun. It's a waste of effort, though. One hopes Jane Austen's character Henry Tilney eventually quit griping about people using nice to mean "pleasant"; whether he did or not, griping about a singular phenomena is ultimately pointless.

 

[Tarheel]

I would hope that if I were learning a foreign language I would be taught how people really do speak it and write it and not be taught according to somebody's idea of how it should be done.

 

[Tarheel]

Sentence taken from an article:

"Alas, there’s no escaping how American this Trump phenomena is."

According to Microsoft Word, "phenomena" must be replaced with phenomenon, in the above example. Is THE plural wrong in this context?
Because, it seems to me, if phenomena was replaced by any other word it would be singular.

I agree with Microsoft Word on this one.

 

[Raymott]

"Criteria" is another of these words often used wrongly for the singular, instead of "criterion".

 

[jutfrank]

I would hope that if I were learning a foreign language I would be taught how people really do speak it and write it and not be taught according to somebody's idea of how it should be done.

Yes but people speak and write in many differing ways and of varying levels of competence, for many reasons. You can't teach all of it. And different groups of people speak and write differently, too. Some might use non-standard language as a conscious choice, in which case we can't say it's 'wrong', and some might use it without knowing that it's 'wrong', and want to be corrected.

I think the important thing is to be aware of the effect that we want our chosen use of language to have. And this desired effect is what teachers should bear in mind when advising on use.