Grade School Lesson

It's not just your civil status that can be described as complicated, because English grammar is just another case of "It's complicated."


English is not an everything-I-need-to-learn-I-learned-in-kindergarten thing. So even when we were taught in grade school and high school the correct English grammar and that not all words need an additional "s" at the end or a change "y" to "ies" to be in plural form, we still tend to say stuffs like baggages, luggages, evidences, jewelries and equipments.


Early this week, I read a Philippine Star article about top 5 annoying Pinoy expressions which included grammatical errors I have mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Yes, those words I italicized are said to be common mistakes of pluralizing words. If I weren't taught in college that words stuffs and equipments don't require "s" at the end to be in plural form, I guess I didn't understand the author of the article's sarcasm at all when he wrote, "Stuffs, equipments, jewelries, evidences, baggages, luggages. Who said we didn't know our grammar? Add 's' to form plural, right?"

Obviously, the other words mentioned by the author are new to me. When I looked them up in the dictionary online, it shows that there are no such words as jewelries, baggages and baggages. But when I typed in evidences, I was directed to the page of "evidence," meaning that it actually accepts the word with "s" at at the end. But, of course, I needed to double check it in other sources. I googled it and found a much reliable source which helped me clear the confusion.

So, "common uncountable nouns" is what you call them. That helped me remember a grade school lesson.

See ho complicated English is? If I didn't know these, then there is a great chance I'll be saying something like this, "Those luggages and baggages contain some stuffs, that will serve as evidences that I came from abroad, such as Japan-made equipments and jewelries.