A few days ago
Singular And plural…?
This is a question my five year old posed on the tube this morning. I just wondered if anyone knew the answer, because I really couldn’t think of one!
If more than one goose is ‘geese’, why isn’t more than one moose ‘meese’?
Top 5 Answers
A few days ago
Favorite Answer
The plural of moose is actually “moose.” The word goose and the word moose originate from different languages, hence the difference in plurals.
1
A few days ago
I think it’s just one of the ‘peculiarities’ of English.
Goose has it’s origin in Old English. The plural form has come from there too.
[Origin: bef. 1000; ME gose, goos, OE gōs (pl. gés); c. G Gans, ON gās; cf. Skt haṅsa, Gk chn, L ānser]
Moose, on the other hand, has been adopted from a Native American Indian language (Alonquian) and was made to follow conventional English rules-add -s to make a plural.
[Origin: 1595–1605, Americanism; < Eastern Abenaki mos, reinforced by cognates in other Algonquian languages, all < Proto-Algonquian *mo˙swa].
1
A few days ago
Sharp five year old! In a few years, check back and make sure “there”, “they’re”, and “their” is all squared away. By the way, quite a few geese live the next block over from me. And ducks.
1
A few days ago
Your five-year-old might like to add tooth and teeth to his/her list. For now, you can tell him/her that some words are just too lazy to change when they become plural, like deer, fish, sheep, and moose.
1
A few days ago
Because the English language doesn’t make any sense sometimes.
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