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

ankita c

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.

A few days ago

Anonymous

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].

A few days ago

MALIBU CANYON

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.

A few days ago

Bethany

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.

A few days ago

Michelle My Bell

Because the English language doesn’t make any sense sometimes.

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Singular And plural…?

Singular And plural…?

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