英语语法：101 What Is the Plural of “Mouse”?

Today’s topic is irregular plural¹ nouns, odd nouns such as “ox” and “oxen.”

Robbie from Keene, New Hampshire, called in with this question:

"One of my friends knows that I'm kind of geeky and into grammar and was asking me about adding the 's' onto words to make [them] plural but in the same question came up with the question about words like 'moose' and 'mice' and 'ox' and a goose--how all of those aren't formed into the plural by adding the 's.' And I was wondering if you can give any insight? Is there any rhyme or reason into this? Is it only animals that we don't to have to add an 's' on to make it plural?"

Guest-writer Bonnie Trenga answers:

Robbie made me laugh when he placed a follow-up call asking me to imagine pluralizing all these words like the word "oxen": "goosen," "micen," and "moosen." Very funny. Perhaps we would say some plurals² that way if we were all still speaking Old English. More on that in a minute.

In modern English, most of the time we make a noun plural by adding an “-s.” So the plural of “animal” is “animals.” Robbie, on the other hand, is asking about irregular plurals, and we’re going to delve³ a bit into the history of English as we learn about three irregular types of plural noun. Many irregular plurals in English do seem to be animal names, but odd plurals aren't limited to animals.

Plurals Derived⁵ from an Old English Form

The first group of irregular nouns we’ll discuss derive⁴ from an obsolete⁶ form in Old English. “Ox” and “oxen” fall into this category. Old English is a West Germanic language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and southern Scotland between the mid-5th and mid-12th centuries (1). “Beowulf” was written in this language.

If someone from a thousand years ago traveled through time to visit us, we certainly wouldn’t understand each other, but as modern English evolved, it retained some elements of Old English. So we can blame Old English for the plural noun “oxen.” Only two other plural nouns in modern English end this way: “children” and “brethren.” Some other nouns, such as “eye,” “house,” and “hose,” used to be pluralized in a similar way, but the plural forms “eyen,” “housen,” and “hosen” are now dialectic or obsolete (2).

Seeing this word “hosen” reminded me of the German word “lederhosen,” which has a similar plural ending as these obsolete words. I’ve always known that English has many roots, including Germanic ones, but I haven’t actually studied German. The site I perused⁷ to learn about German plural nouns tells me there are a dozen different ways that German nouns can form the plural, one of which is “-en” (3).

Mutated Plurals

The second group of plurals we’ll talk about are mutants, which also have Old English roots (4). Examples are “foot,” “goose,” “woman,” and “louse,” which become “feet,” “geese,” “women,” and “lice.” Again we turn to German for an explanation of why they're pluralized this way.

You form these mutated plurals simply by changing the vowel⁸ sound of the singular, in a process called “umlaut” (5). An umlaut is that little two-dot symbol you sometimes see on German vowels⁹, but what we’re talking about here is a different meaning of the word. The process of umlaut is a technical linguistics¹⁰ concept (6). All we need to know for our purposes is that mutated plurals are in fact quite rare in modern English. Other examples are “man” and “men,” “mouse” and mice,” and “tooth” and “teeth.”

Note that the American Heritage Dictionary says when you're talking about a computer mouse, the plural can be either “mice” or “mouses.”

Plurals That Are the Same As the Singulars

Our etymology¹¹ lesson is over but we have one more type of plural noun to cover. These are nouns whose singular and plural forms are the same, such as “deer,” “fish,” “moose,” “sheep,” and “swine.” They are a kind of collective noun, which I covered in an earlier show. As you can tell, these nouns seem to be all animal names, so Robbie was partly right. These nouns don’t have the normal plural ending because we think of them as a group, as in “Six fish are in the aquarium¹².” However, you can pluralize “fish” in the normal way if you want to describe multiple individuals, for example, The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style uses the example “Half a dozen fishes inhabit the lake” (7). However, you wouldn’t say, “fishes” very often unless you’re talking in scientific terms.

I didn’t know that irregular plural nouns could be so interesting. If you want to learn more about Old English or the umlaut process, see quickanddirtytips.com for links to more information.

No Firm Rules

Although I had started out hoping to find a pattern that would help Robbie understand why certain words take strange plurals, the real answer is that the occasional odd plurals are just random¹³ holdovers from Old English or are examples of collective nouns. The bottom line is that they are just the way they are, and people who are learning English simply have to memorize the strange plurals just as they would irregular verbs. Sorry!

Administrative¹⁴

This podcast was written by Bonnie Trenga, author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier, who blogs at sentencesleuth.blogspot.com.

That's all. Thanks for listening.

 

1 plural   

n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的

参考例句：

• Most plural nouns in English end in's '.英语的复数名词多以s结尾。
• Here you should use plural pronoun.这里你应该用复数代词。

2 plurals   

n.复数，复数形式( plural的名词复数 )

参考例句：

3 delve   

v.深入探究，钻研

参考例句：

• We should not delve too deeply into this painful matter.我们不应该过分深究这件痛苦的事。
• We need to delve more deeply into these questions.这些是我们想进一步了解的。

4 derive   

v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• We shall derive much benefit from reading good novels.我们将从优秀小说中获得很大好处。

5 derived   

vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• Many English words are derived from Latin and Greek. 英语很多词源出于拉丁文和希腊文。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derived his enthusiasm for literature from his father. 他对文学的爱好是受他父亲的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 obsolete   

adj.已废弃的，过时的

参考例句：

• These goods are obsolete and will not fetch much on the market.这些货品过时了，在市场上卖不了高价。
• They tried to hammer obsolete ideas into the young people's heads.他们竭力把陈旧思想灌输给青年。

7 perused   

v.读（某篇文字）( peruse的过去式和过去分词 )；（尤指）细阅；审阅；匆匆读或心不在焉地浏览（某篇文字）

参考例句：

• I remained under the wall and perused Miss Cathy's affectionate composition. 我就留在墙跟底下阅读凯蒂小姐的爱情作品。 来自辞典例句
• Have you perused this article? 你细读了这篇文章了吗？ 来自互联网

8 vowel   

n.元音；元音字母

参考例句：

• A long vowel is a long sound as in the word"shoe ".长元音即如“shoe” 一词中的长音。
• The vowel in words like 'my' and 'thigh' is not very difficult.单词my和thigh中的元音并不难发。

9 vowels   

n.元音，元音字母( vowel的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Vowels possess greater sonority than consonants. 元音比辅音响亮。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Note the various sounds of vowels followed by r. 注意r跟随的各种元音的发音。 来自超越目标英语 第3册

10 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。

11 etymology   

n.语源；字源学

参考例句：

• The hippies' etymology is contentious.关于嬉皮士的语源是有争议的。
• The origin of OK became the Holy Grail of etymology.OK的出典成了词源学梦寐以求的圣杯。

12 aquarium   

n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸

参考例句：

• The first time I saw seals was in an aquarium.我第一次看见海豹是在水族馆里。
• I'm going to the aquarium with my parents this Sunday.这个星期天，我要和父母一起到水族馆去。

13 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

14 administrative   

adj.行政的，管理的

参考例句：

• The administrative burden must be lifted from local government.必须解除地方政府的行政负担。
• He regarded all these administrative details as beneath his notice.他认为行政管理上的这些琐事都不值一顾。