If the plural...?

Question

If the plural of mouse is mice then why isn't the plural of house hice?

Answer 1

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 common, 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.)

Answer 2

English is a very strange language.

We speak of a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
You may find a lone mouse, or a whole nest of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
When you speak of a foot, and you show me two feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.

Answer 3

Same reason English has dozens of these anomalies. That's what makes it such a difficult language to master for a non-English speaker.

Answer 4

That's a good question. Sometimes, the English language doesn't make sense.

Answer 5

That's just how the English language is.

Answer 6

Try this
http://www.answers.com/topic/english-plural
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Answer 7

because Mouse is a living things while House isnt

Answer 8

because it is houses or homes

Answer 9

or the plural of moose, meece!!!!!! lol