Alumnus, Alumna, Alumnum

Mood: miffed
Music: none

All right, after replying to comment in a previous post, I was reminded of a very good topic that really irks me and my sister.

You may or may not know that I take Latin. You should know that Alumnus is a Latin word. Now, here's where the problem sets in...

Colleges and High Schools call graduates Alumni (Alumnus for singular). Where's my problem with this, you ask? The endings on the words are masculine. So, all graduates are male then? Here's what it should be...

Alumnum (Neuter [that means no gender] - singular)
Alumna (Neuter - plural)

Now, some of you may get confused because a single person definitely has a gender. Well then, you can call a male graduate an Alumnus (Masculine ending) and a female graduate an Alumna (Female ending). This leads to other confusion because wasn't Alumna just mentioned for neuter, plural? Why yes it was. Feminine, Nominative, Singular has the same ending as Neuter, Nominative, Plural. Get used to it.