distinguished alum

Wed May 6 01:50:38 UTC 2009

I think Larry is right. Why get snooty about "alum" when we don't get
snooty about most loanwords from Latin.

In a message dated 5/5/09 9:47:34 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:

> At 8:46 PM -0400 5/5/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >I deprecate it as a vulgar error. What keeps people from saying simly,
> >"I'm a graduate of [Name]" or some such, now that the classical
> >education is dead and English doesn't distinguish grammatical gender
> >in any meaningful or useful way. If the classical languagesare only
> >noise to you, what's wrong with English?
> >
> >And I really doubt that the average non-classicist has any concept of
> >the the distinction in either meaning or pronunciation between -I and
> >-AE or the meaning of the nueuter plural, -A.
> >
>
> I concede the difficulty of settling on a perfect solution to the
> "alum" problem, but I don't think substituting "graduate(s)" in a
> global search-and-replace really does it.  At many institutions,
> there may well be a graduate club or association, but this is
> distinct from an alumni/ae club or association, since the former
> represents current graduate students rather than undergraduate
> degree-holders. And what about referring to the graduate alumni/ae?
> Are they the graduate graduates?  A few years ago we had an alumni
> weekend (yes, using the masculine generic), which assembled former
> undergraduate linguistics majors as well as former PhDs from the
> department.  I don't think we could have billed this as a graduate
> weekend, for various reasons.  A linguistics BA/PhD weekend, maybe,
> but I don't think that would have been quite as elegant, and for all
> the development office knows wouldn't have been as successful at
> scaring up the hoped-for alumni/ae donations...er, graduate and
> graduate graduate donations.  A Yale linguistics degree-holder(s)
> weekend?  Maybe, but maybe not.
>
> LH
>
> >
> >
> >
> >On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> wrote:
> >>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>-----------------------
> >>  Sender: ?  ?  ?  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>  Poster: ?  ?  ?  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> >>  Subject: ?  ?  ? distinguished alum
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>  "alumnus" and related forms have been troublesome for speakers and
> >>  writers of english for some time, because they're unassimilated bits
> >>  of latin. ? "alumni" is very often used as a singular, as a way of
> >>  avoiding the choice between the sex-marked "alumnus" and
> >>  "alumna" ("alum" is another solution), although many have deprecated
> >>  this as a vulgar error. ? it is sometimes used with reference to a
> >>  woman, as in "Are you an alumni of Green Mt. Camp for Girls?".
> >>
> >>  so there are plenty of occurrences of "an alumni of". ? but there are
> >>  also some (though many fewer) occurrences of "an alumnae of". ? you
> can
> >>  see how this could come about: the pronunciation of -I and -AE in
> >>  latin plurals is vexing, and though many people insist on /ai/ and /
> >>  e/, respectively, an /ai/ pronunciation for both is not uncommon, and
> >>  then the question is how to spell it. ? the association of the -AE
> >>  spelling with women remains strong, so almost all the 640 occurrences
> >>  (dupes removed) of "an alumnae of" that i googled up refer to women.
> >>  but there are a few referring to men:
> >>
> >>  ? >I arrived to school late due to an art bid meeting this morning-but
> >>  they had a celebration for Sue with a "Congratulations Mom" cake and
> >>  punch. And one of our fabulous kitchen employees made up t-shirts with
> >>  Harold's picture on it stating "We're proud of West Babylon's Top
> >>  Chef", (He's an alumnae of our school district as well) that many
> >>  staff members are wearing today.<
> >>  ?  http://bloggingprojectrunway2.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html
> >>
> >>  ? >My friend Andrew Kvammen (Andrew's Bad Stuff) is an alumnae of the
> >>  Young Musicians' Orchestra and he was invited to perform at a show at
> >>  Walt Disney Concert ...<
> >>  ?  http://mickieszoo.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
> >>
> >>  i got into this topic because i came across the following on Paul
> >>  Dickson's website:
> >>
> >>  ? >Dickson, born in Yonkers, NY, graduated from Wesleyan University in
> >  > 1961 and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnae of that institution
> in
> >>  2001.<
> >>  ?  http://pauldicksonbooks.com/
> >>
> >>  (the word is spelled ALUMNI on the Wesleyan (of Conn.) website, by the
> >>  way.)
> >>
> >>  this caught my eye because Dickson writes about language, among other
> >>  things. ? on his website, he says that he "now concentrates on writing
> >>  about the American language, baseball, and 20th century history".
> >>
> >>  arnold
> >>
> >>  ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>

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