[Ganoderma]

can someone help me out. i am from canada and we were taught things like 1 fish, 2 fish. why don't certain words, such as fish, not use "es" for the plural. i am told osme places do use fishes (england, correct me if i am wrong).

can someone explain to me the logic behind this? why 1 shark/2 sharks but 1/2 is/are still fish?

I feel pretty stupid, i am an ESL teacher


PS sorry for all my bad spelling in every post i make, typing is a chore for me.

[InfiniteNow]

What a curious question. I am not sure the underlying reason behind it.

Deer is another that is the same plural and singular. It turns out that wiki has a good listing of english plural words and usage, but not really good explanation:

English plural - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some nouns spell their singular and plural exactly alike; these are regarded by some linguists as regular plurals. Many of these are the names of animals:

deer
fish (and many individual fish names: cod, mackerel, trout, etc.)
moose
sheep
The plural deers is listed in some dictionaries,[1] but is considered by many to be an error.

I'd also like to know why?


Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea...

[Buffy]

I've always assumed--and been told by many who have had to learn it as non-natives--that English was one of the hardest languages to learn because its seemingly *nothing but* "exceptions to the rule." Its right up there with Russian and Chinese.

You're dancing next to another fun topic that maybe someone wants to start a thread on: the endless group nouns we have lying about the language...

A Pod of Meeses,
Buffy

[Leo]

Fish is primarily a mass noun, that is, all that stuff we got in the net, without paying attention to the individuals in it, just the weight of the whole. But when I'm observing two "fishes" swimming around, I prefer considering them as two individuals. Also, there are many complex switches between mass nouns, collective nouns and countable nouns that lead to weird grammatical things.

[Monomer]

The plural of fish is fish or fishes depending on what you're referring to. When you're talking about fish in general then the plural is fish, but if you're talking about different species of fish then the plural is fishes:

Ask the English Teacher: Fish or Fishes?


Also, there appears to be no reason why the plural of deer or sheep is the same as the singular, it's just the way it's been since the beginnings of the english language:

plural - definition of plural by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

I feel pretty stupid, i am an ESL teacher

Don't feel stupid. Most people who have learnt english from birth still get confused and don't really know or understand the rules and exceptions of the language.

[CraigD]

I recall hearing that all languages tend to use irregular forms for important and frequently used parts of speech. Plural forms would be an example: The plural of an important word like “man” is the irregular “men”, while the less important “tree” is the regular “trees”.

Continuing this explanation, commodities – things that can be collected as a form of wealth – tend to use the same word for singular as plural – eg: sheep/sheep, vs. a non-commodity such as horse/horses. Fish, deer, etc. have self-plurals for the same reason.

As languages evolve, these irregularities are supposed to become less common.

As a linguist, author J.R.R.Tolkien is said to have been aware of this theory, so when he invented fictional sentient species, he gave them irregular plurals, eg: dwarf/dwarves, elf/elves. More humble species retained regular plurals, eg: hobbit/hobbits.

[Qfwfq]

I agree with Leo and I'll add that this type of thing exists in many languages. I believe however that there are other invariant plurals, not only ones of this type, whereas some mass nouns are quite different from the one for indiviaduals (such as person-people).

Originally Posted by CraigD

As a linguist, author J.R.R.Tolkien is said to have been aware of this theory, so when he invented fictional sentient species, he gave them irregular plurals, eg: dwarf/dwarves, elf/elves. More humble species retained regular plurals, eg: hobbit/hobbits.

It certainly wasn't Tolkien that invented the words 'dwarf' and 'elf'. These plurals belong to a wide category, that of nouns ending in f.

How many hooves does a deer have? How many halves make a whole? How many staves do we need?

[Tormod]

Slightly off topic but in the same vein, I've always wonder why it's called a "pair of scissors". In Norwegian it's called "en saks" (meaning "a scissor").

Same thing with trousers: a pair of trousers...but it's only one item.

[eric l]

Originally Posted by Tormod

Slightly off topic but in the same vein, I've always wonder why it's called a "pair of scissors". In Norwegian it's called "en saks" (meaning "a scissor").

Same thing with trousers: a pair of trousers...but it's only one item.

How about a "pair of binocculars" then ? Would that be four occulars ?

[eric l]

This diiferent ways to make plurals in English must have something to with the multiple roots of the English language (Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Normandy French, probably some Viking languages too).

Plural by vowel-change is as in "goose -> geese" (just to indicate that it is not aways a question of importance) is also quite frequent in German, though in German you often have the combination of vowel-change and suffix as in "Mann -> Männer" or "Baum -> Bäume".

And we were taught that the plural of fish is fishes when you actually count them : "a dozen fish" would mean "about 12", while "a dozen fishes" would mean "exactly 12". I wonder if native speakers can confirm this.