Most of the note, as the title suggests, will be discussing the grammar related to my previous note on the word “genius”. Feedback as to whether the note is clear enough (e.g. whether or not I should use simpler words) would be very much appreciated.
- Part of Speech
“My genius son will surely win the competition.”
“Telling your parents that you need HBO for your English class was genius.”
“You are genius!”
“I’m pretty sure you’ve encountered something similar to the three sentences above in your daily English conversation. There’s really nothing wrong with the sentences … if you’re not doing any English-proficiency tests, that is.
“See … in Standard English – yupe, that’s the one that we have to follow in formal English – “genius” is a noun / kata benda, which unfortunately, makes the sentences above grammatically incorrect.
The first sentence: “My genius son will …” is wrong since the word is used as an adjective / kata sifat to describe “son”. Remember that in Standard English “genius” is a noun and cannot be used in such a way. You may instead say something like: “My son, who is a genius [by the way], will surely win the competition.” [say it with a proud-mom tone => ]
The second sentence also has the same problem. The word “genius” is describing how brilliant your action is, i.e. what a good move it is to trick to your parents to get HBO installed. And just as the first sentence, since the word serves as an adjective, i.e. describing a noun, the second sentence is also grammatically incorrect in Standard English.
Now, you may be wondering why I said that the third sentence is also wrong (grammatically). You may argue that the word serves as a noun there, i.e. saying that ‘you’ are a person who is very smart (referring to the second meaning of “genius” in my previous note). Well, you are right about the part of speech, congratulations! The sentence still has another problem, though. Remember that a singular countable noun always needs to have a determiner (words such as “a / an / the”) in front of it. So, the sentence should be: “You are a genius!” or for plural: “You are geniuses!”
So, all in all, it is acceptable to use “genius” as an adjective, but it’s not the case in Standard English (especially the formal one).
One last tip: One simple way to change the three sentences above into grammatically correct sentences is by changing the word “genius” with “brilliant” (which is an adjective, by the way).
- Countable Genius vs. Uncountable Genius
Note that “genius” can be countable or uncountable, depending on the meaning that you want to use.
If you mean ‘the person’ (second meaning), then it is countable. The implications, like any other countable nouns, are:
- You can use the plural form: geniuses.
- You need to put some determiner in front of the singular word, for example:
She is a genius.”
“The school genius has won yet another competition.”
If you mean ‘the intelligence’ (first meaning), then it is uncountable. The implications are the following:
- No plural form.
Your geniuses amaze me.” wrong
Your genius amazes me.” right
- You cannot use “a” in front of the word.
The painting is an example of an artistic genius of Picasso. wrong
The painting is an example of the artistic genius of Picasso. right
- For you who are wondering the meaning of “stroke” in the sentence: “Her idea was a stroke of genius.”, here’s the definition, taken from Cambridge Dictionaries Online:
stroke (EVENT)
noun
a stroke of luck/genius, etc. when something happens or succeeds suddenly by luck, intelligence, etc:
By a stroke of luck, someone else was walking along the path and heard my shouts for help.
Phew …. That’s it.
Quite a long one, but I hope it helps. Feel free to ask any questions and as I said, any feedbacks would be appreciated.
Cheers.
