storing kefir grains in milk, kefir grain and countability for scobies

[Guest guest]

[Jafa] How long will the kefir grains stay alive in the same milk and

how much milk should be used for a kefir grain about the size of a

small brussel sprout?

[MAP] I've never seen any information that we could use to make a

specific conclusion about these questions. I think the best we can do

is " a few weeks " and " enough to cover the kefir grains, but the more

milk you use the more food there'll be for the scoby and the longer

it'll survive " . These answers essentially summarize anecdotal

experience for a lot of people.

By the way, as a separate topic, I was intrigued by your use of " kefir

grain " as a singular noun to refer to a unit of kefir grains,

presumably based on the standard concept of unitary objecthood

(macroscopic contiguity, well-defined boundary, etc). Let me confess

upfront that this usage conflicts with my personal, individual mental

lexicon and the corresponding lexicon I've projected onto my larger

American English language community. In other words, it's technically

classified as " ungrammatical " in my idiolect, and while it's

definitely possible that it's perfectly " grammatical " in other

people's idiolects, this would defy my intuition.

I have found myself using " clump of kefir grains " to express this

meaning as a singular noun. As an alternative to " clump " I have

occasionally used " blob " , although I do consider kefir grains to be

more clumpy than blobby. The other usage I've found comfortable is

" kefir scoby " , as a synonym for " clump of kefir grains " , with the

intuition that " scoby " inherits the relevant properties of " culture " ,

strongly preferring to be countable.

Before going any further, let me clarify the linguistic issue we are

dealing with. As we all know subconsciously, all English nouns are

either countable ( " chair " , " egg " , " culture " [bacterial], " dog " ,

" building " ) or mass ( " water " , " furniture " , " gold " , " culture " [social,

political, culinary, etc], " sand " , " fatigue " , " barley " ,

" information " ). (As an aside, this distinction is expressed

differently in different languages, often non-overtly; the English

pattern is not universal.) Countable nouns can be singular or plural.

Mass nouns cannot be singular or plural; no concept of plurality

exists for mass nouns.

Note that often the " same " noun (morpho-phonetically) has two or more

different " versions " , one or more countable versions and a mass

version. For example, " banana " , as in " I put banana in my smoothie "

and " I put a banana in my smoothie " . For words like this, countable

and mass versions are equally comfortable and common. For other

words, one version is far more common than the other, but there are

still two. For example, " water " , as in " Gimme some warm water "

(common) and " He sailed many waters around the globe in his day "

(rare). Another example is " dog " , as in " I saw a dog eat raw lung

with inspiring vim " (common) and " His shirt smells like dog " (rare).

" egg " is a similar case, as in " My window is covered with eggs "

(common) and " There's egg on my window " (rare). In some cases,

however, it is essentially impossible to make a version with different

countability. For example, " information " can never be countable

(although trying to use it that way is a common error among non-native

speakers), nor can " furniture " , and " building " [the word in " tall

building " , not the gerund] can never be mass.

In some cases, there is robust idiolectal variation. For example,

" shrimp " . A Kansas farmer and most other people will likely say " I

cooked shrimp for dinner " , whereas a shrimp packer or gatherer may say

" I cooked some shrimps for dinner " . Personal experience with the

discrete, concrete manifestations of something correlates with the

likelihood of adopting a countable version of a predominantly mass

noun. This familiarity factor is not restricted to the materiality of

medium-sized objects though; witness the countable noun " music " often

used by music specialists ( " This is a music of awkward pauses and

rowdy accordions " or " Among the musics of Indonesia, the solo double

reed repertoire of Sumatra has proven most popular to audiences in

Idaho's progressive farming community " ), but which is considered

unacceptable or unnatural to the general public.

Crucially for the topic at hand, note that some mass nouns feel like

plurals because they end with " s " . For example, " oats " is *not* a

plural noun; it's a mass noun. " oat " does not exist as a free word in

English, although perhaps it did once in the past, and of course there

is the bound morpheme " oat " that can be used as a part of fixed words

like " oatmeal " , " oat bran " , " oat seed " , " oat curry " (I made this up,

but it *could* exist). We can't say " I found a purple oat in the

straw this afternoon " . One might object that " Oat is a versatile

grain " is possible (though to my ears this is borderline at best),

hence establishing the existence of a singular countable noun " oat " ,

but the contention thusly broached doesn't diminish the point at hand,

because this " oat " would not stand in a plurality relationship with

the " oats " we're citing as a mass noun. To express the meaning of a

countable unit we are forced to say things like " oat seed " , " oat

groat " , or " grain of oats (?) " , just like we are forced to say " piece

of furniture " . In my idiolect , and presumably many others', " kefir

grains " fits into this category as well; it's a mass noun, not a

plural of " kefir grain " , despite its obvious etymological origin in a

plural form of " grain " . In my idiolect, " kefir grain " simply does not

exist. It's my intuition that the analogy between " kefir grains " and

" oats " is exceptionally tight on many points, synchronically and

diachronically.

" grain " by itself has various (synchronically) independent meanings in

English, notably including the " grain of sand " meaning and the " cereal

grain " meaning. The former is strictly countable, and the latter has

both a common mass version ( " I feed my cows grain because I'm

ignorant, greedy, and too lazy to nurture my pasture " ) and a common

countable version ( " Spelt is a grain that has become a trendy

substitute for modern wheat in some circles " or " Once I stopped eating

grains, I became healthy and happy " ). It is the former, countable

meaning that must historically account for the word " kefir grains " , so

it's easy to see why there would at least be a morphological intuition

to justify the usage of " kefir grain " as a countable back-formation.

(By the way, I have never found any discussion of the etymology of

" kefir grains " --not even on Dom's site--so if anyone has any leads,

please share.)

It's worth noting here that, while it's a truly awful name, " kefir

grains " could be defended against accusations of being a misnomer,

since the " grain of sand " " grain " is indeed a perfectly valid English

word. Of course, given that the physical properties of kefir grains

are a poor match for the prototype of granularity, often lacking full

boundaries between units and assuming non-granular shapes, the defense

is weak enough to ignore, and I will continue to unhesitatingly

complain about this entrenched terminology using any lexical

invectives at my disposal. (By the way, Japanese uses a bona fide

misnomer for kefir scobies: " youguruto-kinoko " (yogurt mushroom)!

I'll take mushrooms over grains any day!)

It is my assumption, rooted in my idiolectal experience and these

general observations, that the pendulum of countability has

irrevocably swung away from etymological suggestion to the side of

perceptual reality for the English word " kefir grains " , but I await

more data and input in light of this potential counterexample issued

by Jafa.

I would like to hear more about others' intuition regarding " kefir

grain " . Is this singular noun usage comfortable and natural for you?

Are there are other phrases you like better? If " kefir grain " exists

in your idiolect, does it mean " clump " or does it mean something like

" the smallest seed-shaped and seed-sized part of kefir grains " (the

etymologically associated meaning)? What is your preferred way of

referring to kefir scobies? I believe the most common solution is

simply not refer to them directly at all, since humans are so

profoundly flexible in their communicative strategies.

Fascinating! I just found about 4910 googits for " kefir grains " and a

whopping 1660 for " kefir grain " ! Same order of magnitude! I'm

shocked! This is gonna be messier than I thought... Looks like a lot

of bound morpheme activity...

(Hmm, " brussel sprout " is kinda interesting too now that I'm thinking

about it!!! (Sorry, Jafa!) But here I think the morphology and the

lucid physicality conspire to license a count/mass flip-flop in a way

disanalogous to the " kefir grains " case. This case is much fuzzier.)

Mike

SE Pennsylvania

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. --Alan Kay