One hoof, two hooves; one roof, two roofs: can any English majors explain the inconsistency?

Question

Doesn't quality as One Of The Top 10 Burning Questions of the Decade, but it **does** confuse me. (Surprised any children ever become literate, with the sometimes-bizarre rules that English has...)

Can anyone explain the reason behind the variance?

Answer 1

Reason? We don't need no stinking reason. ;)

Ever heard the phrase, "There are exceptions to every rule"? In English, there's about a million. Take a gander:

1.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
2.
The farm was used to produce produce.
3.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
5.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10.
I did not object to the object.
11.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13.
They were too close to the door to close it.
14.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18.
After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Pronunciation in the English language

The author, Prof. H. L. Chace was a professor of French and wrote these in 1940 to to demonstrate that intonation of spoken English is almost as important to the meaning as the words themselves. He is the originator of ANGUISH LANGUISH, for you, your friends, and your family to half pun wit. Example: Fairy Tales Little Red Riding Hood becomes this title Furry Tells Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

Four All Who Reed and Right ~ Author Unknown

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice;
yet 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?

If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
but though we say mother, we never say methren.

Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.

English Rules of Thum (sic)

1. Don't use no double negatives.
2. Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
3. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
4. About them sentence fragments.
5. When dangling, watch your participles.
6. Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
7. Just between you and i, case is important.
8. Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
9. Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
10. Try to not ever split infinitives.
11. It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
12. Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
13. Correct speling is essential.
14. A preposition is something you never end a sentence up with.
15. While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not become ensconsed in obscurity.
16. Eschew obfuscation.


You will either find these funny or be even more confused. ;)

Answer 2

First off, with the "roof" example, I am pretty sure that "rooves" was in fact used as a plural in older forms of English.

However, there really is an explanation for why plurals seem so inconsistent. Take the example of "mouse" which becomes "mice" vs. "spouse" which becomes "spouses." While I can't tell you the linguistic origin of the word mouse, I do know that the origin of spouse is French, from "epouse", which is pluralized "epouses." Mouse, coming from another linguistic root, has a different form in the plural.

The short answer is, English has so many inconsistencies because it is a language that has absorbed words from many other languages, with certain carryovers such as plural forms. Not in every case, but in many cases.

Answer 3

It's just one of the quirky usage things that are so prevalent in English. It's partly because our language has had so many different linguistic influences over the centuries. It's a great muddle. However, both "roof" and "hoof" have their origins in Middle English, so they should have developed in similar styles. No clue why they didn't.

Answer 4

Irregular plural forms
There are several other irregularities in the plural forms of English nouns. Here are examples:

Man becomes men
Woman becomes women
Fungus becomes fungi
Thief becomes thieves (note that not all words ending in "f" follow this patttern: roof/roofs)
Species remains species
Medium becomes media
Person becomes people



English really is a strange language sometimes.

Answer 5

Yes, English is derived partially from Romance languages like French and Spanish, and partly from German. Therefore there are multiple sets of gammatical rules, each of which only apply to the words rooted in the languages they derive from.

Answer 6

I think they'll slide off Phil and catch a cold! Must be a dare or a charity event