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Why do some English words have the same singular and plural? Examples are mostly animals - deer, fish, moose, sheep, swine, buffalo - but also aircraft, stone (weight), head (cattle). Is it related to the Norman/ Saxon divide noted in Ivanhoe?
David Null, Claremont, California, USA
- Could it be that these are animals that were hunted, fished, or herded and that there was a convention that used the singular as a sort of generic plural when going after these creatures for sport or food? For example: I bought two rabbits; yet, I hunt rabbit. For some of the more common ones the separate singular and plural forms merged; or, rather, one form disappeared.
Anthony Gumbrell, Seattle USA
- For those wanting the short answer - because many English words are not English words. Plural forms obey the spelling rules attached to the language of origin.For those wanting the long answer, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_pluraland/or http://www.indopedia.org/English_plural.html(which has a clearer layout).
Sheila Kirby, Esbjerg, Denmark
- I love that line from the late and great Hovis Presley: "It's true what they say about women ... It's an irregular plural".
Sheila Kirby, Esbjerg, Denmark
- No, it's not related. I can only conjecture, but my best guess (this is a shot from the hip) is that the words with changeless plurals are basic English, carried down from Old English (the Anglo-Saxon tongue), whereas the words with +s plurals derive from Greek, Latin, or French. An interesting example of an oddly formed plural is "children." The suffix -er for plural was once fairly common. I have heard old country folk say "childer" as a plural. The _en plural suffix is an old one that has gradually died out ("oxen" is the only survivor). But "children" somehow uses both plurals.
Mark, Honey Island, Texas USA
- Animals (most of your examples) were traditionally dealt with as 'uncountable' nouns in English (like sugar or timber) reflecting perhaps a sense that there was an inexhaustible supply to be hunted. 'We decided to hunt elephant.' Words for military equipment seem to have followed the same principle. Other examples include cannon and artillery. Words for quantities are often also used in the singular when counting, eg foot, hundred, thousand, though as with head and stone, plurals exist in other contexts: 'five foot three', 'five pound 40', five million', but 'he's worth millions'.
Keith Mason, London UK
- You are on the right track with your Ivanhoe example. In forming plurals, much depends on how the word got into English, that is, which language we "borrowed" it from, which we did and do a lot. If you look in a dictionary you will see that "deer" comes to us from the German "tier", a beast. German does not form the plural by adding an "s" as English does, so one deer, two deer, etc.I'm not sure you are right about "fish", what about the parable of the loaves and fishes? Fish comes from German too, fisch, and you can either stick to fish or use fishes, so that is a borrowed word where you can use either sort of plural. So when you get interesting questions like this, look in a dictionary and see where the word came from.There is also a matter of usage, two heads are better than one but no farmer I ever met had two heads of cattle!
Stephen Brown, Wellington, NZ
- Ever since I can remember, "FISH" has been both singular and plural. No matter where the word originated, Webster's dictionary calls it both ways, a noun and plural. The word "fishes" should however, be declared obsolete like so many other words have been in the past. For example: Caucasion?
Reynold R. Montes, So. Pasadena, California, U.S.A.
- My understanding is that most words with unmarked plurals were neutral (neither masculine nor feminine) in the tri-genedered days of old English. Neutral words in old English had umarked plurals which we have retained.I would even go so far as to posit that the unmarked plural of "beer" that is used in some dialects is as a result of the influence of the word deer (O.E. deor).
Seán Dagher, Montreal, Quebec Canada
- With fish & fishes the way I was taught was that when dealing with numbers of fish then the plural is 'fish' but when dealing with a collection of species then it is 'fishes'. The same is for sugar. You can have different types of sugar and when you refer to a single type and numbers of it then you use 'sugar' but when referring to the collection of types of sugar they are known as 'sugars'.
Galbi3000, UK
