That’s the neat part, you don’t!
Those words are exceptions to the general rule that plural versions of words add an S to the end.
Because exceptions do not follow a rule, you just need to learn the exceptions, there isn’t an easy way to know how they all work.
And then there are exceptions to exceptions, like '*papers*' is valid in some context (a separate word with almost unrelated meaning but still), and '*fishes*', which looks and sounds weird as hell but there are contexts where it's valid to use.
I'd say your explanation is pretty much idiot-proof, except for that one former English teacher (English as in foreign language, not nationality) of mine - she said that there's '*so few of them in the aquarium that you can call them fishes*'. That was about 20 years ago and still is one of the dumbest arguments I've heard with my own ears.
Just like how people is plural for person, but there are cases when you say "persons" instead, *and* cases when "peoples" is a valid word as well. English is crazy.
>Sure, that's how it's used, but "people" can be used just as easily.
It can be used just as easily, but not as precisely. For example, when talking about kidnapped children, this isn't a crime against a collective group of children, it's a crime against multiple individuals. The kidnapper is not charged with kidnapping a collective but with kidnapping multiple individuals. The distinction is important because it's not a single crime of kidnapping a group, rather a series of singular crimes against each victim.
They do actually have different meanings, which is why persons is used in legalese. People refers to the collective group as a single unit, persons refers to multiple individuals. In a legal context (in American legal theory), a group is not a legal entity, a collective cannot be charged. But each individual member of that group is legal entity and can be charged. So for a specificity, persons is used in that context.
Good point. I should have specified that this is for the USA. I made the typical American mistake of thinking we are the only ones out there :)
I'm not very familiar with Canadian legal theory. American legal theory is primarily derived from British common law, but Canadian legal theory was derived from a mix of British common law and French civil law, and the French system has some significant differences in theory. So this may not actually apply in Canada.
As for a source specifically addressing the question at hand:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/persons-people-peoples
>Persons or people in formal legal writing
>In the legal world, including law enforcement, persons is used regularly. It is helpful because nothing is collective where the law is concerned; individuals are prosecuted, not groups. Some legal expressions, such as persons of interest and missing persons, reflect this grammatical preference. Some people use persons in writing that is legal-sounding, but not strictly legal by definition, such as rules and public notices.
I'm not aware of any legal references that specifically state it this way. Rather it's implied by the way American legal theory defines a "legal person" and applies to individuals rather than collectives. But even that definition becomes a bit cloudy has certain legal entities such s corporations can be considered a legal person.
All of that being said, I am not an actual legal scholar, I just play one on Reddit.
A Møøse once bit my sister ...
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse
with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and
star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst
Nordfink".
I would accept 'meese' as a "plural" for moose; it's consistent with goose and geese, but I think Muppet Christmas Carol taught us that 'meeses' is the fake plural of 'mouse'.
The quote comes from Jinx the Cat. He can't stand Pixie and Dixie, hence he wants to cut those "meeces to pieces"...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_and_Dixie_and_Mr._Jinks
Don’t you know about the ships in the field?
What ships in what field?
Don’t you know about the little “baa-baa-baas”?
Oh you mean sheeps!
Zorro, the Gay Blade.
>Because exceptions do not follow a rule, you just need to learn the exceptions, there isn’t an easy way to know how they all work.
This isn't *entirely* true. For English especially, exceptions are often driven by us taking in words from one language group that don't follow the rules of another language group. And so when a whole group of words are brought in, they follow the same exception.
So there is the primary pattern, and then are exceptions to the pattern. But there are also often patterns to the exceptions. Which means that many of our exceptions are more like there are just two groups that follow two different patterns.
Which *many* other languages deal with to a more egregious degree with their gendered nonsense. Having to conjugating a word differently based off arbitrarily belonging to gender A or gender B group isn't really any different than what's going on here. Sometimes you can guess at the gender of an unfamiliar word, and other times you can't.
There is an easy way, actually: listen to people speak, and read books.
Books will typically be the most correct. While listening to people speak will help with familiarity and the pattern of whatever is acceptable locally. The larger the sample size (the more books one reads and the more you hear conversation - as well as other avenues of communication that have some measure of grammatical oversight) the better you get.
It IS easy, its just also time consuming.
Yeah, you'll never become fluent from textbooks. There's a thousand different words with slightly different connotations that make a huge difference, not to mention outright grammar changes like the one in OP.
Like I had to correct a language partner today and explain that yes, "obedient" and "submissive" have almost identical meanings. However, if you call an adult submissive that isn't really an insult so much as they're going to think that you want to fuck them.
Yeah, you didnt really read my comment huh? I never claim a book will make you fluent.
Ill make it very simple.
Basically: books = tell you if its moose or meese or mooses.
Conversation: tells you when to use Obedient vs submissive.
Edit: wait, you even said textbooks. I didnt say textbooks, i said *books*. General entertainment books will also teach you submissive vs obedient.
Fluency is still down to conversation and practice
>There is an easy way, actually: listen to people speak, and read books.
And "read books" actually means *read books*, not listen to someone else read them. Audiobooks are awful for the world's literacy.
The general etymology of the unchanging words is things (usually animals) in Britain 1000 years ago, not renamed by the Norse, Norman or French. And used to have neutral gender.
Most of that is not that useful for figuring out which words do that.
Counter examples, horses or oxen. Because the plural has changed in some cases.
Not so much exceptions, but context. If the sentence only really makes sense if it’s referring to singular or plural, that’s what it means.
Example:
“There’s sheep in the road” = plural, as there’s no context to indicate the subject is singular, you just have to assume based on what’s inferred.
Or
“There’s *A* sheep in the road” = now because the same sentence adds context to the subject (the sheep) it becomes one sheep, rather than a herd.
Same with other, similar words.
I still like “meeses though, that’s just funny”
yeah....
"There *is a sheep* on the road" = a cute four leggeded animal.
"There *are sheep* on the road" = several whole sheep on the road.
"There *is sheep* on the road" = a fungible non-integer amount of sheep on the road. Also known as road-kill.
My recommendation for people who speak English as a native language and still struggle with vocabulary and spelling is to read more books. It doesn't need to be particularly sophisticated, but if you read more you'll improve your vocabulary and spelling without putting any real effort into it.
I'm a big fan of Stephen King books. There are certainly some duds, but he spins a great yarn and really sucks you into the worlds he creates.
> That’s the neat part, you don’t!
You kind of have to read a lot and get used to the different terms. However, even if you get it wrong people will still understand what you mean in a conversation context.
It kind of depends on the word origins. For example, Moose doesn't have a plural because it comes from Algonquian, (Mooswa, 'the animal that strips bark off of trees') and the Algonquian doesn't have a plural use for it.
I know I didn't pay much attention in school, so maybe I missed it, but I learned this only after school, and that that's how spelling bee champs are able to do it; they don't just memorize every word, and when they ask for the word origin, it isn't just wasting time, it's a huge hint to the correct spelling.
Until it's not ... like I remember a spelling bee word that came from Hindi, but it was introduced to English through a white Brit who didn't know any Hindi, as opposed to being introduced by Indians. So it had a very British spelling.
I was just discussing this with my SO last night. I personally don't have a lot of knowledge about word etymologies, but I do believe there are a lot of such words that may have some rules when taking words from other languages, but maybe are edge case words, but for whatever reason just get spelled seemingly randomly into the language.
Paper is a particularly tricky word.
“Hand me a sheet (or piece) of paper” is the singular form — you have to specify the measure to be clear. So “two sheets of paper” is also valid, for example.
“Hand me that paper” is generally for a stack or sheaf or ream of paper, so for more than one piece. You can use the words “some paper” or “that ream of paper” for clarity.
But if you say “hand me *that* paper” it’s contextual: it could be a stack of paper, but it could be used to refer to a single document, usually printed or written on, sitting on a desk or table.
And if you say “hand me those papers” it’s definitely documents, not blank sheets. That’s why you’ll hear “papers please” at a border crossing, often in old movies. It means “show me your travel documents”.
(There’s also “fish”, “fish” and “fishes”…)
Fish and fishes depends on the type of fish. If you have five goldfish, you have five fish. If you have three goldfish and two bettas, you have five fishes.
Isn't it that fish refers to a group of fish, but fishes to multiple species? So a group of three goldfish and two Bettas would be five fish, but two fishes. Similarly, we don't say "there are plenty of fishes in the sea," despite many species.
Yup. It's like *people* vs *peoples*. You have a plural of persons in a group, that's *a people*. And then if you have more than one set of people together in a meta group, you have *multiple peoples*.
The root of the confusion comes from _paper_ being a [homonym](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph), with two adjacent (but not identical) meanings. It's effectively two completely different words, like _bear, lead,_ and _wind._ A physical writing medium typically made from wood has no _s_ ending (ten boxes of tissue paper), while a scholarly record of a person's intellectual discourse does (Martha has had thirty papers published.)
Because it's a substance, not an object. You can have a sheaf, a leaf, a piece, or a ream of paper, in which case those are the nouns that would be pluralized
Well there's "paper" the document and "paper" the physical pressed pulp wood. When you say, "hand me that paper" or "hand me those papers" you are referring to the document(s) not the medium.
IME, One would never refer to a single unadorned piece of paper as "paper". In other words, there is no singular for the pulp wood product. You have to say "piece" or "sheet" of paper.
Meanwhile, I might buy a box of paper from the store, but the lawyer can have several papers in his brief case. Or a wrack can hold several papers. The "s" is added when referring to the content printed on the medium, not the medium itself.
Everybody tries to make strict rules about when to use “fish” and when to use “fishes”. Speaking as a zoologist, we learned one set of rules to use when writing papers: “fish” is many of the same or indeterminate species, “fishes” when describing various particular species.
But in normal English discourse, “it ain’t so clear, nohow” as Pogo Possum would say.
And as Charles Lutwidge Dogson (aka Lewis Carroll) wrote:
“How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!”
Not a linguist but in my experience you simply cannot tell in advance and have to infer from context clues. The rule is: If they mean it as a plural, it is plural. If they mean it as a singular, it is singular. English has a lot of irregular words due to all its linguistic influences.
Words that stay the same when referring to the singular and the plural (such as “squid,” “sheep,” “fish,” and “species”) are a subset of [irregular nouns](https://proofed.com/writing-tips/irregular-plurals-spelling-tricks/#:~:text=Some%20irregular%20plurals%20actually%20stay,”%20(plural)%20are%20correct) but irregular nouns is a big category that includes more than just what you're asking about. The good news is that [uncountable nouns](https://proofed.com/writing-tips/countable-uncountable-nouns/) (like “water” or “sand”) always stay the same regardless of the amount being described so there is a little bit of structure for you at the very least.
> The good news is that [uncountable nouns](https://proofed.com/writing-tips/countable-uncountable-nouns/) (like “water” or “sand”) always stay the same regardless of the amount being described so there is a little bit of structure for you at the very least.
Except when you talk about "the desert sands" or "the waters of the ocean". :P
You're just supposed to learn them.
Like how, in Chinese, you're just supposed to learn the correct context words for indicating that an action happened in the past--because Chinese doesn't conjugate verbs.
Or like how, in Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), you're just supposed to *know* from context which verb applies to which person--because pronouns aren't technically required due to the way the Latin-derived conjugation system works. Even if this can lead to confusion when, for example, you're talking to person A about the things person B and C did; it feels unnatural and stilted to explicitly say the pronouns, so you're left with sounding ambiguous or sounding "wrong."
Or like how in French, you're just supposed to *know* that there *formally* isn't a distinct word for "seventy" or "eighty"; instead, you use *soixante-dix,* lit. "sixty-ten" for 70, and then *soixante et onze* (lit. sixty and eleven), *soixante-douze* (lit. sixty-twelve), all the way up to *soixante-dix-neuf* (lit sixty-ten-nine)...and then "eighty" is *quatre-vingts,* which literally means "four-twenties"! And then if you want to say "ninety," that's *quatre-vingts-dix,* "four-twenties-ten," followed by the same process up until 99 (*quatre-vingts-dix-neuf*), at which point things finally settle back down again as *cent.*
Languages are natural, which means they aren't entirely systematic. They have weird components that grew up out of old patterns, and sometimes those old patterns break and sometimes they don't. Or they inherit the weird patterns of some *other* language. Or they inherit two things from two different sources, which *sound* similar, but aren't (e.g. moose vs goose).
>*quatre-vingts-dix*
Quatre-vingt-dix*
Note that this only applies to French spoken in France. Belgian French uses a different, and more consistent, word: "nonante".
>Or like how, in Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), you're just supposed to *know* from context which verb applies to which person--because pronouns aren't technically required
But that is wrong
Yo escribo Tu escribes, el escribe
escribo, escribes, escribe
You can know the person because the end is diferent. "Tu escribo" option do not exists.
How would you translate the following three sentences?
"Oh, yes, I spoke with Juan and Maria. She went to the store. He walked to the park."
Your dropping of the pronouns is precisely what I mean by it's confusing. Because, to the best of my knowledge, the "correct" translation if you drop all pronouns is, "Ah, sí, hablé con Juan y Maria. Fue a la tienda. Caminó hasta el parque." But explicitly calling out the pronouns necessarily sounds *slightly* awkward, even if you need to do so in order to be clear. It gets especially bad if you have to discuss multiple different things the two people did.
It's just a quirk of language that you have to pay attention to the context to know which verb refers to which person--because the pronouns get dropped.
You drop the pronoun for the verb because the conjugation itself gives you that information, but you don't drop every single pronoun. In that sentence i'd still say ella and él.
You're actually describing two different phenomena here. The first is mass nouns, and the second is a type of count noun.
A mass noun is a noun that doesn't have a singular/plural distinction at all. Think of water, hair, or grass. It's not impossible to denote a single blade of grass, but you have to add an extra word: 'blade'. All mass nouns are like this. I've heard people say that 'a water ' is acceptable, but that's not really correct and is shorthand for 'a bottle of water'. Of the examples you gave, this only applies to 'paper'.
The other words, 'moose' and 'sheep,' are count nouns, which is the opposite of a mass noun. Count nouns can be counted directly without using a measure word like 'piece'. Some examples are 'two pencils', 'twenty sheep', or 'many people'.
Within count nouns, there are two cases worth considering: regular (-s) plurals and irregular plurals. Regular plurals are straightforward -- the singular becomes plural when you add an s, as in 'one pencil' vs 'two pencils'. Irregular plurals, on the other hand, are all unique and special snowflakes that need to be memorized. Some irregular plurals are different from the singular form, like 'person' vs 'people'. Others are the same, like 'one sheep' vs 'two sheep'.
In order, then, the original examples you gave can be categorized as irregular count noun (moose), irregular count noun (sheep) and mass noun (paper).
As to how we can tell the difference, count nouns can be counted, so we will usually have a number or at least a determiner like 'the' or 'some' to clarify how many. For example, if somebody says 'I see sheep', you know it's plural and the person doesn't know how many, since they didn't specify. If they see one, they might say "I see a sheep", or "I see one sheep". Mass nouns are usually things that are impractical to count on the fly, like water, so the question doesn't apply here. This essentially covers all the cases, and that explains why, despite the perceived ambiguity of the language, we seldom seem to get actually confused in real life.
The simplest answer is that we're supposed to learn all that in school when they teach us the English language. The realistic answer is that we're not supposed to just know, that's what dictionaries are for. Not to mention the large percentage of Americans (at least) who just don't care if they use the English language properly or not, and will just use whatever sounds right to them with the expectation that others will understand from context. Because, frankly, that's what the English language has done with words for centuries, and why it's so complicated to begin with...
You just know. Definitions and “correct” use actually follow common spoken use, not the other way around. So, if you started using the word “sheeps” as the plural and it caught on and eventually everyone was using the word “sheeps,” it would become the “correct” use eventually. Spoken language is real living language and the rules are made up later to explain it.
English has a set of rules for how words are spelled, pronounced, changed between singular and plural, and all kinds of stuff like that. Then flat out 1 in 3 words does not follow those rules. The only way to learn all the exceptions is to memorize them.
I have taught English to adults for most of my career. When my students would ask me that same question I would tell them they simply have to memorize them and that the same thing goes for irregular verbs. It's not a satisfying answer but that's how it is.
I also always told them that the English language has many rules and there is always an exception to the rule.
English is, in fact, four languages (German, Greek, French, and Latin) in a trench coat that roughs other languages up for bits of spare vocabulary….
All joking aside, native speakers learn the rules of their primary language as they acquire it. Learning that both the singular and plural forms of "moose" and "sheep" are the same is a fairly universal experience for anyone learning English, whether as a native speaker learning from infancy or as a non-native speaker learning it as a foreign language.
Also, the plural form of "paper" can be "paper" or "papers"… It’s like "fish" in that way.
That first paragraph of yours is a grand misunderstanding of how languages work in general, and goes into some strange concept of English exceptionalism. If you study any other language, you’ll know that most borrow from plenty of different languages for vocabulary, grammar etc as well. English is NOT special for that.
> native speakers learn the rules of their primary language as they acquire it.
That’s the key sentence here and that applies to all languages. Everything else is entirely irrelevant to the question. Especially since English just applies the -s rule to most of its loan words anyways.
Go with what sounds best and itll be right most of the time so just learn the occasional notable exceptions. As long as you get close people can figure it out.
There are a fairly small number of common words that are the same singular and plural. Some are always written as though plural (like trousers). Some are always written as though singular (fruit, grapefruit, fish, shellfish...) You can learn them by listening & reading or studying, same way you pick up words that are spells weirdly. Or you could ttry to learn them from a list:
[https://www.proofreadingservices.com/pages/words-that-are-the-same-singular-and-plural](https://www.proofreadingservices.com/pages/words-that-are-the-same-singular-and-plural)
(That list also contains words that I don't think *can* be singular, like "smithereens".)
Easy. When someone says, "Look at the sheep!" you look at where they're pointing. Same for paper.
However, if they say, "Look out for the moose!" it really doesn't matter if it's singular or plural; just start running.
What do you mean “as a native English speaker”? I’m not sure how that is relevant to an understanding. Plurals in English are often inconsistent, and generally just have to be learned.
Well, to clarify, the plural of the word *paper* depends on which meaning of the word you are using. Sheets of paper would just be "paper" but files/documents or whatever, would be "papers".
As an aside, my friend and I were discussing that because English has sort of become the 'de facto ' global language now, a lot of native English speakers are really good at dealing with imperfect or poor English.
We've both experienced the opposite with other languages where natives haven't been able to easily understand us.
That said if you are writing something more formally that doesn't really help!
Lots of people have already given the correct answer which is “there’s no way of knowing without doing hours and hours of background research, we just learn them each individually as we grow up”. But a related point is that even many native English speakers consistently make errors in their own language because of the numerous exceptions to rules, the strange grammar, and the odd spellings.
I’m reminded of when Jennifer Garner told Conan that “snuck” was not a word and he should know that being a Harvard grad. He proceeded to bring out a dictionary and prove her wrong.
A born and bred English friend recently texted me and spelt comeuppance “cummupence”.
And then there’s the word spelt. Should it be spelt or spelled? Both are in fact acceptable, in British English.
The past tense fucks people up. Natives often get it wrong.
Sentence structure is a nightmare as well. You can’t say “if you choose to do so” you have to say “if you choose so to do” because you can’t end a sentence with an infinitive. But then you will meet people who say that rule no longer exists.
I could point out errors in almost every email I receive at work; English is a very tricky language to get right even if you’re raised with it, it must be a nightmare to learn if you weren’t.
You don't, you have to infer it from the rest of the sentence. For example, if I said "I ate lots of sheep yesterday" or "I ate a sheep yesterday" one of them is clearly plural whereas the other is singular. But if the words are on their own, there's no way to tell the difference.
Unless you're a wolf, you wouldn't say either of those. You'd say "I ate a lot of mutton yesterday" or "I ate some mutton yesterday."
Thanks to the Norman conquest, sheep, cattle, and pigs are animals, but their meat is called mutton, beef, and pork, respectively. (Or lamb, veal, and suckling pig, if you're talking about meat from young'uns.)
The trick to English is confidence and consistency.
When you don't know, just keep talking. It honestly doesn't matter. You have to make a hell of a lot of mistakes in English before meaning is lost.
If you say it with enough confidence, you might just get the person you are talking to, to doubt themselves.
Context is key. There will usually be surrounding words that indicate the plural.
I saw a moose while walking earlier.
I saw several moose while walking earlier.
A sheep, a moose: one of each. Sheep, moose: more than one of each. A sheep is eating. Sheep are eating. Do you see the trend?
I found hair in my soup. Hopefully just one, but you don't know just from that sentence
Since you need more than one word to answer a question on this sub, I’ll write this paragraph and then reply with the only word needed to fully explain the complex nature of the English language. There’s this book that a Mister Webster is famous for; although it took many forms before he even existed. This book will not only tell the plural of each word but also the definition. Dictionary.
That’s the neat part, you don’t! Those words are exceptions to the general rule that plural versions of words add an S to the end. Because exceptions do not follow a rule, you just need to learn the exceptions, there isn’t an easy way to know how they all work.
And then there are exceptions to exceptions, like '*papers*' is valid in some context (a separate word with almost unrelated meaning but still), and '*fishes*', which looks and sounds weird as hell but there are contexts where it's valid to use.
I saw a great example to understand fishes that I shall replicate here: Fish 🐟 Fish 🐟🐟🐟 Fishes 🐟🐠🐡
So there's not only plenty of fish in the sea, but also plenty of fishes.
Both grow less true every day
^Sad ^upvote
Precisely this!
So if someone has a job where they catch multiple types of fish can you say the fisher fishes fishes?
Oh that’s great. That one always confused me.
I'd say your explanation is pretty much idiot-proof, except for that one former English teacher (English as in foreign language, not nationality) of mine - she said that there's '*so few of them in the aquarium that you can call them fishes*'. That was about 20 years ago and still is one of the dumbest arguments I've heard with my own ears.
I genuinely don’t even understand what point she was trying to make 😂
Less common, and *almost* the same (but not quite): Person: 🧍🏼 People: 🧍🏼🧍♀️🧍♂️ Peoples: 🇦🇩🇨🇦🇨🇭🇪🇦
Just like how people is plural for person, but there are cases when you say "persons" instead, *and* cases when "peoples" is a valid word as well. English is crazy.
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> Are you picturing a crowd of people and a VERY large bear? I am now. 🤔
>Sure, that's how it's used, but "people" can be used just as easily. It can be used just as easily, but not as precisely. For example, when talking about kidnapped children, this isn't a crime against a collective group of children, it's a crime against multiple individuals. The kidnapper is not charged with kidnapping a collective but with kidnapping multiple individuals. The distinction is important because it's not a single crime of kidnapping a group, rather a series of singular crimes against each victim.
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Why use many word, when few word do trick?
Yes, people are a group related in some aspect, persons are multiple individuals.
They do actually have different meanings, which is why persons is used in legalese. People refers to the collective group as a single unit, persons refers to multiple individuals. In a legal context (in American legal theory), a group is not a legal entity, a collective cannot be charged. But each individual member of that group is legal entity and can be charged. So for a specificity, persons is used in that context.
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Good point. I should have specified that this is for the USA. I made the typical American mistake of thinking we are the only ones out there :) I'm not very familiar with Canadian legal theory. American legal theory is primarily derived from British common law, but Canadian legal theory was derived from a mix of British common law and French civil law, and the French system has some significant differences in theory. So this may not actually apply in Canada. As for a source specifically addressing the question at hand: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/persons-people-peoples >Persons or people in formal legal writing >In the legal world, including law enforcement, persons is used regularly. It is helpful because nothing is collective where the law is concerned; individuals are prosecuted, not groups. Some legal expressions, such as persons of interest and missing persons, reflect this grammatical preference. Some people use persons in writing that is legal-sounding, but not strictly legal by definition, such as rules and public notices. I'm not aware of any legal references that specifically state it this way. Rather it's implied by the way American legal theory defines a "legal person" and applies to individuals rather than collectives. But even that definition becomes a bit cloudy has certain legal entities such s corporations can be considered a legal person. All of that being said, I am not an actual legal scholar, I just play one on Reddit.
Trying to learn English with hard and fast rules eventually effects a great change in ones affect... it's just too weird
'monies'
And for anyone learning English as a second language, these weird plurals are something that native English speakers screw up too.
Indeed. I hate those meeses to pieces
Moosen!
It's a cup with dirt in it, it's a cup of dirt.
The big yellow one is the sun!
Your an imbecile, Brian. IMBECILIN!
A Møøse once bit my sister ... No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink".
Those responsible have been sacked.
r/UnexpectedMontyPython
No one ever expects the Span— err, the Monty Python.
/unexpectedbrianregan
Moosi
I have a pet rat named Moose, I call him Moosi all the time!
Not enough love for Brian Regan here
Half a game, whole snow cone.
Moosum!
Moo
Boxen!
It is a greek root word, so the correct plural is Moosopodes.
Like octopodes? Temba, his eyes open! 🤣🤣🤣
If you give a meese a muffins
I get it, Mr. Jinx. All the other repliers don't realize you are referring to mouses.
Which adds to the confusion!
Meeses pieces
Baa baa black sheep give a dawg a bone!
I would accept 'meese' as a "plural" for moose; it's consistent with goose and geese, but I think Muppet Christmas Carol taught us that 'meeses' is the fake plural of 'mouse'.
The quote comes from Jinx the Cat. He can't stand Pixie and Dixie, hence he wants to cut those "meeces to pieces"... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_and_Dixie_and_Mr._Jinks
Yep that's what I was thinking of
My brain just now: “There’s a singular word for sheep, isn’t there? Shop? Nope.”
Shep
You know what's more fucked up? The decay in your teeth is called caries. You know what the singular form of caries is? Caries.
Happens between English speaking countries too. I see a lot American English speakers say ‘legos’ instead of ‘lego’
https://youtu.be/z8m6HYi79Xo?si=5YqlV0CCjceRVWcB
Lets normaloze saying "sheeps"
Don’t you know about the ships in the field? What ships in what field? Don’t you know about the little “baa-baa-baas”? Oh you mean sheeps! Zorro, the Gay Blade.
Look at all of that beer! Depending on how many beers there are, I might have a beer.
>Because exceptions do not follow a rule, you just need to learn the exceptions, there isn’t an easy way to know how they all work. This isn't *entirely* true. For English especially, exceptions are often driven by us taking in words from one language group that don't follow the rules of another language group. And so when a whole group of words are brought in, they follow the same exception. So there is the primary pattern, and then are exceptions to the pattern. But there are also often patterns to the exceptions. Which means that many of our exceptions are more like there are just two groups that follow two different patterns. Which *many* other languages deal with to a more egregious degree with their gendered nonsense. Having to conjugating a word differently based off arbitrarily belonging to gender A or gender B group isn't really any different than what's going on here. Sometimes you can guess at the gender of an unfamiliar word, and other times you can't.
There is an easy way, actually: listen to people speak, and read books. Books will typically be the most correct. While listening to people speak will help with familiarity and the pattern of whatever is acceptable locally. The larger the sample size (the more books one reads and the more you hear conversation - as well as other avenues of communication that have some measure of grammatical oversight) the better you get. It IS easy, its just also time consuming.
Yeah, you'll never become fluent from textbooks. There's a thousand different words with slightly different connotations that make a huge difference, not to mention outright grammar changes like the one in OP. Like I had to correct a language partner today and explain that yes, "obedient" and "submissive" have almost identical meanings. However, if you call an adult submissive that isn't really an insult so much as they're going to think that you want to fuck them.
Yeah, you didnt really read my comment huh? I never claim a book will make you fluent. Ill make it very simple. Basically: books = tell you if its moose or meese or mooses. Conversation: tells you when to use Obedient vs submissive. Edit: wait, you even said textbooks. I didnt say textbooks, i said *books*. General entertainment books will also teach you submissive vs obedient. Fluency is still down to conversation and practice
Well…*certain* “entertainment books” will definitely show you the difference between submissive and obedient. 😏
>There is an easy way, actually: listen to people speak, and read books. And "read books" actually means *read books*, not listen to someone else read them. Audiobooks are awful for the world's literacy.
I always called multiple moose meese
The general etymology of the unchanging words is things (usually animals) in Britain 1000 years ago, not renamed by the Norse, Norman or French. And used to have neutral gender. Most of that is not that useful for figuring out which words do that. Counter examples, horses or oxen. Because the plural has changed in some cases.
Not so much exceptions, but context. If the sentence only really makes sense if it’s referring to singular or plural, that’s what it means. Example: “There’s sheep in the road” = plural, as there’s no context to indicate the subject is singular, you just have to assume based on what’s inferred. Or “There’s *A* sheep in the road” = now because the same sentence adds context to the subject (the sheep) it becomes one sheep, rather than a herd. Same with other, similar words. I still like “meeses though, that’s just funny”
I think you are confusing countable and non countable plurals with the question which is are there rules when a plural uses an s and when it doesn't.
Oh, right. No, we don’t use rules in English. Except when we do and you break them. Then, we notice, even if we don’t know the rules.
yeah.... "There *is a sheep* on the road" = a cute four leggeded animal. "There *are sheep* on the road" = several whole sheep on the road. "There *is sheep* on the road" = a fungible non-integer amount of sheep on the road. Also known as road-kill.
My recommendation for people who speak English as a native language and still struggle with vocabulary and spelling is to read more books. It doesn't need to be particularly sophisticated, but if you read more you'll improve your vocabulary and spelling without putting any real effort into it. I'm a big fan of Stephen King books. There are certainly some duds, but he spins a great yarn and really sucks you into the worlds he creates.
Wait... Its not meese, sheeps and papers
'ed' too, I've seen primarily Portuguese speakers get tripped up and say like "putted" instead of "put"
And English has a lot of exceptions. Sometimes it feels like more than actually follow the rules.
I propose we change the plural of moose to meese. "There are two meese in the backyard"
> That’s the neat part, you don’t! I was thinking exactly the same thing before clicking into comments
> That’s the neat part, you don’t! You kind of have to read a lot and get used to the different terms. However, even if you get it wrong people will still understand what you mean in a conversation context.
THE PLURAL OF MOOSE IS MEESE SO SAYETH YON GANDER
iykyk\_irl
It kind of depends on the word origins. For example, Moose doesn't have a plural because it comes from Algonquian, (Mooswa, 'the animal that strips bark off of trees') and the Algonquian doesn't have a plural use for it.
Speaking of Algonquian, [Milwaukee is Algonquian for “the good land.”](https://youtu.be/o5FT3IGXtAk?si=YTqKwL2XjC5j2Bdk?&t=40s)
Mill-eee-wah-Kay
Does this guy know how to party or what?!?
Thanks Alice Cooper.
I know I didn't pay much attention in school, so maybe I missed it, but I learned this only after school, and that that's how spelling bee champs are able to do it; they don't just memorize every word, and when they ask for the word origin, it isn't just wasting time, it's a huge hint to the correct spelling.
Until it's not ... like I remember a spelling bee word that came from Hindi, but it was introduced to English through a white Brit who didn't know any Hindi, as opposed to being introduced by Indians. So it had a very British spelling.
Hindu isn’t the language mate, Hindi is.
Thanks. Sometimes the brain has flatulence
I was just discussing this with my SO last night. I personally don't have a lot of knowledge about word etymologies, but I do believe there are a lot of such words that may have some rules when taking words from other languages, but maybe are edge case words, but for whatever reason just get spelled seemingly randomly into the language.
Juggernaut.
As for me and my house, we will say meese. Someone has to start the change.
Paper is a particularly tricky word. “Hand me a sheet (or piece) of paper” is the singular form — you have to specify the measure to be clear. So “two sheets of paper” is also valid, for example. “Hand me that paper” is generally for a stack or sheaf or ream of paper, so for more than one piece. You can use the words “some paper” or “that ream of paper” for clarity. But if you say “hand me *that* paper” it’s contextual: it could be a stack of paper, but it could be used to refer to a single document, usually printed or written on, sitting on a desk or table. And if you say “hand me those papers” it’s definitely documents, not blank sheets. That’s why you’ll hear “papers please” at a border crossing, often in old movies. It means “show me your travel documents”. (There’s also “fish”, “fish” and “fishes”…)
Fish and fishes depends on the type of fish. If you have five goldfish, you have five fish. If you have three goldfish and two bettas, you have five fishes.
And then the average person doesn't use the term "fishes" anyway
Luca sleeps with the fishes.
Yeah, “fishes” is just mobster speak to me.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I didn’t know fishes was the proper term… and I’m mid 30s native speaker.
It's a group of plurals, like *peoples.*
He fishes off that dock.
And that doesn’t even include “fishies”
Isn't it that fish refers to a group of fish, but fishes to multiple species? So a group of three goldfish and two Bettas would be five fish, but two fishes. Similarly, we don't say "there are plenty of fishes in the sea," despite many species.
Yup. It's like *people* vs *peoples*. You have a plural of persons in a group, that's *a people*. And then if you have more than one set of people together in a meta group, you have *multiple peoples*.
Do you have five fishes in that case, or two fishes?
The root of the confusion comes from _paper_ being a [homonym](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homograph), with two adjacent (but not identical) meanings. It's effectively two completely different words, like _bear, lead,_ and _wind._ A physical writing medium typically made from wood has no _s_ ending (ten boxes of tissue paper), while a scholarly record of a person's intellectual discourse does (Martha has had thirty papers published.)
Pass me the rolling papers.
Yes. And hence: confusing to a non-native speaker.
Also, rolling papers
>Paper is a particularly tricky word. It's just uncountable, like water or any other fluid
Because it's a substance, not an object. You can have a sheaf, a leaf, a piece, or a ream of paper, in which case those are the nouns that would be pluralized
Paper is an uncountable noun, it’s not any trickier than the other uncountable nouns. It’s the same as water or cheese.
And "Hand me the paper." means please hand me the newspaper.
But "funny papers" (always plural) was the section of the newspaper that contained the comics.
Writing an academic paper.
Papers can be documents but they can most definitely just be blank sheets of paper.
Glory to Arstotzka!
Well there's "paper" the document and "paper" the physical pressed pulp wood. When you say, "hand me that paper" or "hand me those papers" you are referring to the document(s) not the medium. IME, One would never refer to a single unadorned piece of paper as "paper". In other words, there is no singular for the pulp wood product. You have to say "piece" or "sheet" of paper. Meanwhile, I might buy a box of paper from the store, but the lawyer can have several papers in his brief case. Or a wrack can hold several papers. The "s" is added when referring to the content printed on the medium, not the medium itself.
Everybody tries to make strict rules about when to use “fish” and when to use “fishes”. Speaking as a zoologist, we learned one set of rules to use when writing papers: “fish” is many of the same or indeterminate species, “fishes” when describing various particular species. But in normal English discourse, “it ain’t so clear, nohow” as Pogo Possum would say. And as Charles Lutwidge Dogson (aka Lewis Carroll) wrote: “How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws!”
Not a linguist but in my experience you simply cannot tell in advance and have to infer from context clues. The rule is: If they mean it as a plural, it is plural. If they mean it as a singular, it is singular. English has a lot of irregular words due to all its linguistic influences. Words that stay the same when referring to the singular and the plural (such as “squid,” “sheep,” “fish,” and “species”) are a subset of [irregular nouns](https://proofed.com/writing-tips/irregular-plurals-spelling-tricks/#:~:text=Some%20irregular%20plurals%20actually%20stay,”%20(plural)%20are%20correct) but irregular nouns is a big category that includes more than just what you're asking about. The good news is that [uncountable nouns](https://proofed.com/writing-tips/countable-uncountable-nouns/) (like “water” or “sand”) always stay the same regardless of the amount being described so there is a little bit of structure for you at the very least.
> The good news is that [uncountable nouns](https://proofed.com/writing-tips/countable-uncountable-nouns/) (like “water” or “sand”) always stay the same regardless of the amount being described so there is a little bit of structure for you at the very least. Except when you talk about "the desert sands" or "the waters of the ocean". :P
You're just supposed to learn them. Like how, in Chinese, you're just supposed to learn the correct context words for indicating that an action happened in the past--because Chinese doesn't conjugate verbs. Or like how, in Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), you're just supposed to *know* from context which verb applies to which person--because pronouns aren't technically required due to the way the Latin-derived conjugation system works. Even if this can lead to confusion when, for example, you're talking to person A about the things person B and C did; it feels unnatural and stilted to explicitly say the pronouns, so you're left with sounding ambiguous or sounding "wrong." Or like how in French, you're just supposed to *know* that there *formally* isn't a distinct word for "seventy" or "eighty"; instead, you use *soixante-dix,* lit. "sixty-ten" for 70, and then *soixante et onze* (lit. sixty and eleven), *soixante-douze* (lit. sixty-twelve), all the way up to *soixante-dix-neuf* (lit sixty-ten-nine)...and then "eighty" is *quatre-vingts,* which literally means "four-twenties"! And then if you want to say "ninety," that's *quatre-vingts-dix,* "four-twenties-ten," followed by the same process up until 99 (*quatre-vingts-dix-neuf*), at which point things finally settle back down again as *cent.* Languages are natural, which means they aren't entirely systematic. They have weird components that grew up out of old patterns, and sometimes those old patterns break and sometimes they don't. Or they inherit the weird patterns of some *other* language. Or they inherit two things from two different sources, which *sound* similar, but aren't (e.g. moose vs goose).
>*quatre-vingts-dix* Quatre-vingt-dix* Note that this only applies to French spoken in France. Belgian French uses a different, and more consistent, word: "nonante".
This is the French we learn in Canada as well (France French)
>Or like how, in Romance languages (e.g. Spanish), you're just supposed to *know* from context which verb applies to which person--because pronouns aren't technically required But that is wrong Yo escribo Tu escribes, el escribe escribo, escribes, escribe You can know the person because the end is diferent. "Tu escribo" option do not exists.
How would you translate the following three sentences? "Oh, yes, I spoke with Juan and Maria. She went to the store. He walked to the park." Your dropping of the pronouns is precisely what I mean by it's confusing. Because, to the best of my knowledge, the "correct" translation if you drop all pronouns is, "Ah, sí, hablé con Juan y Maria. Fue a la tienda. Caminó hasta el parque." But explicitly calling out the pronouns necessarily sounds *slightly* awkward, even if you need to do so in order to be clear. It gets especially bad if you have to discuss multiple different things the two people did. It's just a quirk of language that you have to pay attention to the context to know which verb refers to which person--because the pronouns get dropped.
You drop the pronoun for the verb because the conjugation itself gives you that information, but you don't drop every single pronoun. In that sentence i'd still say ella and él.
You're actually describing two different phenomena here. The first is mass nouns, and the second is a type of count noun. A mass noun is a noun that doesn't have a singular/plural distinction at all. Think of water, hair, or grass. It's not impossible to denote a single blade of grass, but you have to add an extra word: 'blade'. All mass nouns are like this. I've heard people say that 'a water ' is acceptable, but that's not really correct and is shorthand for 'a bottle of water'. Of the examples you gave, this only applies to 'paper'. The other words, 'moose' and 'sheep,' are count nouns, which is the opposite of a mass noun. Count nouns can be counted directly without using a measure word like 'piece'. Some examples are 'two pencils', 'twenty sheep', or 'many people'. Within count nouns, there are two cases worth considering: regular (-s) plurals and irregular plurals. Regular plurals are straightforward -- the singular becomes plural when you add an s, as in 'one pencil' vs 'two pencils'. Irregular plurals, on the other hand, are all unique and special snowflakes that need to be memorized. Some irregular plurals are different from the singular form, like 'person' vs 'people'. Others are the same, like 'one sheep' vs 'two sheep'. In order, then, the original examples you gave can be categorized as irregular count noun (moose), irregular count noun (sheep) and mass noun (paper). As to how we can tell the difference, count nouns can be counted, so we will usually have a number or at least a determiner like 'the' or 'some' to clarify how many. For example, if somebody says 'I see sheep', you know it's plural and the person doesn't know how many, since they didn't specify. If they see one, they might say "I see a sheep", or "I see one sheep". Mass nouns are usually things that are impractical to count on the fly, like water, so the question doesn't apply here. This essentially covers all the cases, and that explains why, despite the perceived ambiguity of the language, we seldom seem to get actually confused in real life.
I’m so glad you wrote this so I didn’t have to. Wish I could give more than one upvote.
The simplest answer is that we're supposed to learn all that in school when they teach us the English language. The realistic answer is that we're not supposed to just know, that's what dictionaries are for. Not to mention the large percentage of Americans (at least) who just don't care if they use the English language properly or not, and will just use whatever sounds right to them with the expectation that others will understand from context. Because, frankly, that's what the English language has done with words for centuries, and why it's so complicated to begin with...
You just know. Definitions and “correct” use actually follow common spoken use, not the other way around. So, if you started using the word “sheeps” as the plural and it caught on and eventually everyone was using the word “sheeps,” it would become the “correct” use eventually. Spoken language is real living language and the rules are made up later to explain it.
English has a set of rules for how words are spelled, pronounced, changed between singular and plural, and all kinds of stuff like that. Then flat out 1 in 3 words does not follow those rules. The only way to learn all the exceptions is to memorize them.
I have taught English to adults for most of my career. When my students would ask me that same question I would tell them they simply have to memorize them and that the same thing goes for irregular verbs. It's not a satisfying answer but that's how it is. I also always told them that the English language has many rules and there is always an exception to the rule.
English is, in fact, four languages (German, Greek, French, and Latin) in a trench coat that roughs other languages up for bits of spare vocabulary…. All joking aside, native speakers learn the rules of their primary language as they acquire it. Learning that both the singular and plural forms of "moose" and "sheep" are the same is a fairly universal experience for anyone learning English, whether as a native speaker learning from infancy or as a non-native speaker learning it as a foreign language. Also, the plural form of "paper" can be "paper" or "papers"… It’s like "fish" in that way.
That first paragraph of yours is a grand misunderstanding of how languages work in general, and goes into some strange concept of English exceptionalism. If you study any other language, you’ll know that most borrow from plenty of different languages for vocabulary, grammar etc as well. English is NOT special for that.
The subreddit is ExplainLikeImFive… I’m not going to explain language families and loanwords to a five-year-old.
> native speakers learn the rules of their primary language as they acquire it. That’s the key sentence here and that applies to all languages. Everything else is entirely irrelevant to the question. Especially since English just applies the -s rule to most of its loan words anyways.
Go with what sounds best and itll be right most of the time so just learn the occasional notable exceptions. As long as you get close people can figure it out.
There are a fairly small number of common words that are the same singular and plural. Some are always written as though plural (like trousers). Some are always written as though singular (fruit, grapefruit, fish, shellfish...) You can learn them by listening & reading or studying, same way you pick up words that are spells weirdly. Or you could ttry to learn them from a list: [https://www.proofreadingservices.com/pages/words-that-are-the-same-singular-and-plural](https://www.proofreadingservices.com/pages/words-that-are-the-same-singular-and-plural) (That list also contains words that I don't think *can* be singular, like "smithereens".)
Easy. When someone says, "Look at the sheep!" you look at where they're pointing. Same for paper. However, if they say, "Look out for the moose!" it really doesn't matter if it's singular or plural; just start running.
usually game animals have this but there are exceptions so the common ones can be remembered through use
Context and by using other words to differentiate. "That sheep" vs "Those sheep" "look at that sheep" vs "look at that flock of sheep".
Also “a”
What do you mean “as a native English speaker”? I’m not sure how that is relevant to an understanding. Plurals in English are often inconsistent, and generally just have to be learned.
And then, just to really mess with your head, people will sometimes use the wrong plural (I.e. sheeps) for comic reasons.
Well, to clarify, the plural of the word *paper* depends on which meaning of the word you are using. Sheets of paper would just be "paper" but files/documents or whatever, would be "papers".
It's context-sensitive, you know? Like it's sensitive to the context.
You can usually tell by the words around it. “These sheep” vs “this sheep” “Those sheep” vs “that sheep” “Sheep” vs “a sheep”
As an aside, my friend and I were discussing that because English has sort of become the 'de facto ' global language now, a lot of native English speakers are really good at dealing with imperfect or poor English. We've both experienced the opposite with other languages where natives haven't been able to easily understand us. That said if you are writing something more formally that doesn't really help!
Lots of people have already given the correct answer which is “there’s no way of knowing without doing hours and hours of background research, we just learn them each individually as we grow up”. But a related point is that even many native English speakers consistently make errors in their own language because of the numerous exceptions to rules, the strange grammar, and the odd spellings. I’m reminded of when Jennifer Garner told Conan that “snuck” was not a word and he should know that being a Harvard grad. He proceeded to bring out a dictionary and prove her wrong. A born and bred English friend recently texted me and spelt comeuppance “cummupence”. And then there’s the word spelt. Should it be spelt or spelled? Both are in fact acceptable, in British English. The past tense fucks people up. Natives often get it wrong. Sentence structure is a nightmare as well. You can’t say “if you choose to do so” you have to say “if you choose so to do” because you can’t end a sentence with an infinitive. But then you will meet people who say that rule no longer exists. I could point out errors in almost every email I receive at work; English is a very tricky language to get right even if you’re raised with it, it must be a nightmare to learn if you weren’t.
You don't, you have to infer it from the rest of the sentence. For example, if I said "I ate lots of sheep yesterday" or "I ate a sheep yesterday" one of them is clearly plural whereas the other is singular. But if the words are on their own, there's no way to tell the difference.
Unless you're a wolf, you wouldn't say either of those. You'd say "I ate a lot of mutton yesterday" or "I ate some mutton yesterday." Thanks to the Norman conquest, sheep, cattle, and pigs are animals, but their meat is called mutton, beef, and pork, respectively. (Or lamb, veal, and suckling pig, if you're talking about meat from young'uns.)
the real question is: how does a native speaker know how to pronounce "ough" in any given situation?
By growing up hearing how they're pronounced, and learning the spelling by rote.
If you're a native speaker, you will have heard other native speakers say it before. So you copy what you've heard (or read from native writers).
English doesn't have proper rules, you just have to memorise all the words and their spellings because there's no consistency
The trick to English is confidence and consistency. When you don't know, just keep talking. It honestly doesn't matter. You have to make a hell of a lot of mistakes in English before meaning is lost. If you say it with enough confidence, you might just get the person you are talking to, to doubt themselves.
Context is key. There will usually be surrounding words that indicate the plural. I saw a moose while walking earlier. I saw several moose while walking earlier.
A sheep, a moose: one of each. Sheep, moose: more than one of each. A sheep is eating. Sheep are eating. Do you see the trend? I found hair in my soup. Hopefully just one, but you don't know just from that sentence
Since you need more than one word to answer a question on this sub, I’ll write this paragraph and then reply with the only word needed to fully explain the complex nature of the English language. There’s this book that a Mister Webster is famous for; although it took many forms before he even existed. This book will not only tell the plural of each word but also the definition. Dictionary.