I admit I would have liked it if English language Ph.D candidates had some basic working understanding of Ancient Greek, Latin and Old English to serve as a cor

I admit I would have liked it if English language Ph.D candidates had some basic working understanding of Ancient Greek, Latin and Old English to serve as a cornerstone for their studies, but that ship has sailed more than a century ago. If you know Greek, onomatopoeia is not that confusing anymore, and you'd know that if you want to be super-pedantic, the plural of octopus would be octopodes, but never octopi. Then again, if you knew some Old English, you would know correcting everyone and forcing them to use the "original form" is a silly goose chase. You'd know better than to remind everyone that children is a pesky double plural, and childer (from the old English cildru, and like the German Kinder) is more than enough? Or to remind everyone that's it's not "a newt tail" but rather "an EWT tail" and please mind your ewts and a good day to you to sir. Or maybe there will be some people who would still keep doing that, who am I fooling...