short takes

[cellio]

Happy 05/05/05. (First pointed out to me by lensedqso.)

Harkening back to a recent entry: how lightsabers work (link from ralphmelton and mabfan).

Ridiculous food challenges just got even weirder: 15-pound burger challenge -- if you and a friend can eat it in three hours it's free; otherwise it's $30. Ugh. On the other hand, if you go into it blowing off the challenge from the start (and get the wet condiments on the side), it's not a bad price for a week's worth of meatloaf for the right person. (I got the link from nsingman.)

Emails 'pose threat to IQ' (link from brokengoose). Well, at least a threat to the ability to write correct English. "Email" is not a counting noun! C'mon, journalists should know better! (I know -- many of them don't. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to criticize.) Easy way to tell that the phrase "an email" is wrong: substitute by analogy. Do you send "a mail" (physical) to your pen-pal? Email is the mass noun, like mail; it is not the instance, like a letter.

I was reading something recently and saw a reference to Rabbi Micha Berger. Rabbi? When did that happen? I feel bad that I failed to notice somehow. (While we don't talk often, we're occasional correspondents and I have been a guest in his home. He wasn't a rabbi then.)

Comments

[cellio]

"a mail" is not correct useage because "to mail" is the verb and "a letter' is the noun.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. You clearly aren't arguing that "mail" isn't a noun because it's already a verb, because you cite "call" later as both noun and verb. "A mail" isn't correct because "mail" isn't a countable thing. "Mail", however, is a perfectly reasonable noun. "The mailman just delivered the mail." People don't usually "send mail" because they send soemthing more specific instead, like "a letter" -- but there would be nothing grammatically wrong with "sending mail". It's just more vague than people usually like.

Similarly, you can "send email" just fine. You can (by analogy with "call") also "email somone" -- "email" is the verb, "someone" is the object. I generally avoid this in favor of "send email to", but that's just me. But the determiner isn't part of this; I "send mail" or "send email" but not "send a mail" or "send an email".

Plus, I don't see it used in the article as a verb anywhere - only as the noun:

I failed to connect the dots. If something is not countable, then you can't pluralize it by adding "s" -- so "emails" is never a correct plural. For another example, "water" is generally not a counting noun (absent special uses like "the waters of Babylon"); you have a glass of water, not a glass of waters. A countable analogue is "drop"; you can talk about drops (plural) of water, but not about waters.

It looks like you equate "email" with "letter", grammatically. I think they're different; in fact, you could even use "email" as an adjective ("email letter") if you really wanted, but the noun "email" by itself does not, to my mind, refer to a single instance of email. Just as physical mail isn't a letter; a letter is a specific case of mail.