Why goose and geese, but not moose and meese?

Answer 1

Let's face it
English is a stupid language.
There is no egg in the eggplant
No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England
French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth
If the teacher taught,
Why didn't the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down
And in which you fill in a form
By filling it out
And a bell is only heard once it goes!

English was invented by people, not computers
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn't a race at all)

That is why
When the stars are out they are visible
But when the lights are out they are invisible
And why it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts
But when I wind up this observation,
It ends.
AND THIS

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ***, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!

Answer 2

I assume it's because the plural of goose follows a quite ancient pattern. I'm no linguist (and English is not my mother tongue) so I don't know what this phenomenon is called, but it seems similar to the mouse-mice, louse-lice, brother-brethren thing. Now, it may be that in some archaic version of English language, plurals were formed by changing the vowels in the word, but later on the nowadays more common -s ending took over. It was certainly before any English-speaking person saw a moose and NAMED it a moose. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the word moose is "of Algonquian origin", which is, again according to Webster, a Native American people and dialect. So, though the two words look similar, they have completely different origins. One is an archaic word with an archaic plural, the other is a relative newcomer to English. And don't ask me why the plural of moose is not mooses but moose ;)

Answer 3

Ask yourself this... Are any of the animals in the deer species refered to in a plural ending with the letter s? No! You don't say things like "I saw a heard of Elks, Carabos or Mooses." As for Goose and Geese... "While at the farm, I saw a Goose." and "In the fall, I saw a flock of Geese heading south for the winter."

Answer 4

This must be a good question for Noam Chomsky! Isn't there any linguist on here who knows the answer?

My guess is that biologists way back in the day were trying to look intellectual and instead of adding a simple "s" or "es" to the name of an animal to pluralize it, they wanted to goof around with the language and make it seem more scientific.

Why Germans but not Frenches when speaking of people from other countries? Maybe there is no reason, but I'd sure like to know, too!

Answer 5

Why is more than one house houses but more than one mouse mice? Why is a group of cows a herd but a group of birds a flock except if it's crows then it's a murder? These are questions that ESL students ask hundreds of times every day. English is not the hardest language to learn, it is the most frustrating.

Answer 6

Because Moose isn't an english name. its algonquian. the plural of moose is moose. but you can call a group a gang or herd

Answer 7

Because there is no such animal as a meese

Answer 8

The essential to unlock the power to make money from property is discovering the correct on-line interface for writers

Answer 9

haha...fun question but i could go on forever with this...why mouse/mice but not house/hice...why cash and cashiers but not trash and trashiers,lol...why where and wear... why bread and bred,board and bored,on and on and on red/read....and on and on...and then there's words that are spelled the same and mean different things too,rose/rose...barge/barge,bore/bore(drill) read/read(past tense),beat(hit)/beat(music),beet(sugar),feet/feat...aaaaarrrrggghhh!!!...it makes you wonder how anybody ever learns and understands the English language at all...nice question :0)

Answer 10

Because 'Meeses' are mice. Lol.