{"id":613,"date":"2010-02-07T18:53:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-07T18:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=613"},"modified":"2010-02-12T18:08:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T18:08:22","slug":"a-parliamentary-grammar-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/07\/a-parliamentary-grammar-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"A parliamentary grammar debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s good to see that important issues are being debated in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parliament.uk\/\">British Parliament<\/a>. The war in Afghanistan, MPs\u2019 expenses &#8230; and grammar?<\/p>\n<p>A recent debate, an extract of which was published in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/pahansard.htm\">Hansard\u2019s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm200910\/cmhansrd\/cm100119\/indexes\/dx100119.html#oral-1\">19th January<\/a> issue, shows two MP\u2019s having a tiff over the correct plural of \u2018referendum\u2019.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nDenis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab): [. . . ] There is no country keener on referendums than Switzerland. <\/p>\n<p>Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Referenda. <\/p>\n<p>Mr MacShane: Referendums. It is a gerund. <\/p>\n<p>Mr Fabricant: It is a gerundive. <\/p>\n<p>Mr MacShane: It is a gerund. Keep your hair on. [. . . ]<\/p>\n<p>Michael Fabricant: [later in the debate, after checking in the dictionary] The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr.MacShane) may have inadvertently misled the House earlier, and I am sure that he would wish to retract that. As the word \u201creferendum\u201d means \u201cthings to be referred\u201d, according to the \u201cOxford English Dictionary\u201d, it is indeed a gerundive and therefore the plural should be \u201creferenda\u201d. \u201cReferendums\u201d is acceptable in modern usage, though wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Hon. Members: Withdraw!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A tad confused? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/politics\/village-people-230110-1876396.html\">The Independent<\/a> explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But, should you need to ask, Mr Mount confirms that a gerund has no plural form in Latin, therefore if &#8220;referendum&#8221; were a gerund, you could not say &#8220;referenda&#8221;, but since it is in fact a gerundive, &#8220;referenda&#8221; is correct. Correct, if a little pretentious. But I expect you already knew that. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s all sorted then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s good to see that important issues are being debated in the British Parliament. The war in Afghanistan, MPs\u2019 expenses &#8230; and grammar? A recent debate, an extract of which was published in Hansard\u2019s 19th January issue, shows two MP\u2019s having a tiff over the correct plural of \u2018referendum\u2019. Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab): [. . [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,27,219,44],"tags":[589,590,592,593,219,594,588,591],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-hints-and-tips","category-latin","category-words","tag-british-parliament","tag-debate","tag-gerund","tag-gerundive","tag-latin","tag-mps","tag-parliament","tag-referendum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}