gooses and geeses, mooses and meeses......?

Question

why do we have a goose and the plural is geese, yet you have a moose and the plural is not meeses???

Answer 1

Dear Sir,
I am starting a zoo. Please send me a pair of mongooses. No, that doesn't sound right, please send me a pair of mongeese. Still not right - please send me a pair of mongii.
(let's start again)

Dear Sir,
I am starting a zoo. Please send me a mongoose.

PS
Please send me another one.

Answer 2

It all has to do with where the word comes from, and how long ago it came. Goose is an old English word derived from many other European languages; moose is Algonquian and only entered the English language in the 17th century, when the language was considerably more settled.

To some extent, you can tell how "old" a word is -- that is, how long it's been part of the language -- by how it becomes plural (or in the case of verbs, by how it takes the past tense). Man and woman become men and women; this is part of what linguistics calls "i-mutation." The third article in the Sources field is a short but interesting look at this.

Answer 3

There is, believe it of not, a rather clear historical answer which explains MANY of our "irregular plurals", as well as a number of other unusual forms.

Goose was an OLD English word. An important feature of Old English and and most Germanic languages was that i-type suffixes (including some plural endings) would change the sound of the preceding vowel (if it were not already an i-type vowel itself). That' s how we ended up with man/men, mouse/mice, louse/lice, tooth/teeth, foot/feet, etc. as well as other vowel changes between forms (like old > elder,eldest; strong > strength; full > fill; food > feed).

This Germanic change in vowel sounds between forms is called "umlaut" or "i-mutation"

In Middle English the old complicated system of endings fell apart and English developed a new standard way of forming plurals -- adding -(e)s. Some COMMON words kept their older forms, others went along with the change--thus the plural of house took the modern plural form [compare German Haus/Haueser], but mouse did not.

http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/IOE/pronunciation.html#pronounce:imutation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_umlaut

(Note that our irregular forms are found in COMMON words. This is the ordinary way with any language, because it is easiest to force standardization on less used words. But everyday speech is harder to regulate and to change the old ways!)

Now "Moose" is a MODERN English word -- borrowed from Algonquian -- so we wouldn't expect it to follow an OLD English method of forming plurals. What it does instead is follow a pattern common for wild "herd" animals -- the singular and plural forms are the same. Compare: deer, antelope, caribou, elk, buffalo, bison (I believe this has to do with the fact that herds were often referred to as a collection, not always counted out one by one.)

Answer 4

English is made up of words from old German, French, Latin, Norwegian and Danish as well as a few others we've borrowed more recently. Much of the development of the language was spoken rather than written and there were wide regional variations. Modern English is a mixture of all these influences and it's no wonder that the rules are complicated.

Answer 5

I think that plurals such as goose/geese and sheep/sheep have a route in old Danish language, which we acquired from the viking invasions.

An interesting source for this is 'Mother Tongue', written by Bill Bryson. It is well worth a read and explains a lot of these variations in spelling and pronunciation.

Answer 6

first, that wouldn't match up anyway. It would be meese, not meeses. And the english language is full of noncompatible rules and regulatiuons. You just have to know what you're talking about. Trust me, I'm an english major.

Answer 7

can i also add sheep is the same as lots of sheep and one little mouse goes to lots of mice not mouses or again meeses? teaching my two year old daughter plurals is hard work!

Answer 8

English language has many origins, resulting in inconsistencies of plurals and pronunciation.

Plural of roof should be roofs or rooves? Mice - Mices? etc..

Same with pronunciation - the 'ough' varies on different words-

Cough, Rough, Through, Dough. etc...

Answer 9

I've often wondered who makes these rules up like Fish and plural is fish, sheep and plural is sheep. There seems to be no standard.

Answer 10

Meese sounds stupid. End of.

Answer 11

Because meeses eat cheese, and live in a little hole.