2006-10-20 19:04:39 · 12 answers · asked by nrkbis2004 1 in Education & Reference ➔ Words & Wordplay
As a matter of fact, in older English the plural of "house" WAS something very much like "hice"! We can still see this in German which has singular "Maus", plural "Maeuser" (mouse/mice) and singular "Haus", plural "Haeuser" (house/houses). German, in fact, preserves many older plural forms that English has done away with. (For instance, the relationship words Vater/Vaeter, Mutter/Muetter, Bruder/Brueder.)
Most of the older forms in English have done as "house" did, adopting the Modern English way of forming plurals by adding -(e)s. But there was a group of them -- foot/feet, goose/geese, tooth/teeth, louse/lice, man/men, etc. -- that did not make the change. Then there are those whose older forms may co-exist alongside the new forms, like the somewhat archaic form "brethren" (and if you have a King James Bible, you can find "kine" as the plural of "cow").
(Note that the -(e)n is another remnant of an older, Germanic way of forming the plural. We see it again in plurals like "oxen".)
Some of the older forms survive as "irregular plurals". Many of them do so because of the differnt vowel
Actually, the changed vowel in Old English plural noun forms (and various other parts of the language) was NOT invented as a way to mark the plural. It was an indirect result.
Here's how it happened:
1) In most of the ancient Germanic languages, adding a suffix with an i-vowel in it caused the vowel in the preceding syllable to change to be a bit more like the i-vowel ("vowel harmony" -- a comon, very natural change in human speech). This change is called "i-mutation" or "umlaut".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_umlaut
2) Old English had a whole system of case endings Some of these endings had i-vowels in them and caused the change in the preceding vowel noted in #1. (These changes took place in various forms, not just plurals.)
We can see the same sort of change in many other words that took various suffixes: hale/health, long/length, old/elder, eldest, food/feed.
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/IOE/pronunciation.html#pronounce:imutation
3) The system of case endings died out amidst the massive changes that gave us Middle English (for which you may blame the Norman French invaders if you like!) But the vowel changes in many of these old noun forms survived.. Without the endings, the changed vowel itself began to function as a marker of the plural form.
4) The "new" system of forming plurals by adding -(e)s was adopted for MOST English nouns. But many of the most common, familiar words were NOT changed. (This is typical of human language. Note how all our irregular VERBS are COMMON words - have, be, bring, come, go... Rarer words are easily forced into a consistent pattern.)
2006-10-21 00:31:51 · answer #1 · answered by bruhaha 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Mice, lice, houses. I don't think it has anything to do with animate or inanimate nouns. There are no spelling rules in English. A German friend once asked me what GHOTI meant. I had no idea. She explained it to me: GH is 'f' as in couGH, I as in women and TI as in staTIon. Fish! You can't argue with that! The plural of 'goose' is 'geese', but the plural of 'mongoose' is 'mongooses.' And I didn't go through all that to sell you cheap insurance!
2016-05-22 07:02:57 · answer #2 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The plural of mouse, as in the rodent ,is mice.
The plural of a computer mouse, can be either mice or mouses.
2006-10-21 05:58:35 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because it's Mice.
Goose > Geese
Deer > Deer
Fish > Fish
Foot > Feet
Yeah English is weird.
2006-10-20 19:06:04 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
House cook food and mouse rob food.
Mouse stay in a house and house shelter the mouse.
2006-10-20 19:14:01 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
when the plural of goose is geese then why is the plural of moose is mooses?just another example of the complexities of the english language.
2006-10-20 19:13:46 · answer #6 · answered by my_mas0n 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Because mouses in grammatically incorrect. the correct word would be mice.
2006-10-20 19:06:39 · answer #7 · answered by Kris 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Coz this IS English language!
2006-10-21 20:23:27 · answer #8 · answered by Nkaz 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well my answer won't be as big or as boring as the guy above me.
But yeh English is one of the most non-making sense languages around (yeh even my own sentence is dodgy lol)
2006-10-21 02:08:39 · answer #9 · answered by rachel 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋
because the english language has just so many rules and exceptions when it comes to grammar
2006-10-21 02:31:47 · answer #10 · answered by Maria 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋