--- title: Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Most English plurals just add -s or -es (cat, cats; box, boxes), but some very old words change the vowel inside instea --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Plurals that make no sense: mice, shee… # Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese Lesson 10 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/0/) — Most English plurals just add -s or -es (cat, cats; box, boxes), but some very old words change the vowel inside instead: mouse, mice; goose, geese; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; man, men. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/1/) — That is why "two hice" sounds silly: house took the ordinary -s long ago, while mouse kept its old Old English plural; it is history, not logic. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/2/) — Some words don't change at all: one sheep, two sheep; one deer, two deer; one moose, two moose; you know how many from the number or from "is" and "are". - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/3/) — Where a word comes from decides a lot: moose came from a Native American (Algonquian) language and mongoose from Marathi, a language of India, so neither has anything to do with goose and neither becomes "meese" or "mongeese". - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/4/) — Plurals never need an apostrophe: a shop sign "Tomatoe's 50p" is wrong; it should be "Tomatoes 50p". - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/5/) — An irregular plural is a plural not made by adding -s or -es; old vowel-change plurals include mice, lice, geese, feet, teeth, men and women. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/6/) — Sheep, deer and moose are the same in singular and plural; fish is usually the same too (three fish). - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/7/) — Fishes is used, especially by scientists, for different kinds of fish: "the fishes of the Atlantic". - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/8/) — Children is a double plural: Old English already had a plural "cildru", and later the old ending -en was added; oxen keeps the same -en ending. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/9/) — Octopus comes from Greek; octopuses is the usual English plural, octopodes is the Greek-style one, and octopi is common and listed in many dictionaries though it is built on a mistake. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/10/) — Many words ending in -o add -es (potatoes, tomatoes, heroes, echoes), but some just add -s (pianos, photos, zoos). - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/11/) — An apostrophe shows missing letters or belonging, never just a plural. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/12/) — Dice was first the plural of "die"; today many people also say "a dice" for one. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/13/) — Mongoose comes from Marathi, a language of India, so its plural is mongooses. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/14/) — Human comes from Latin "humanus" through French and is not the English word "man", so its plural is humans. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/15/) — In the west of Scotland weans are children, and bairns are children in Scotland and the North East of England; "baltic" is Scottish slang for freezing cold, and "oot" means out. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/16/) — Trousers, scissors, glasses and pliers are plural-only nouns: one object with two matching parts, counted with "a pair of". - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/17/) — Most nouns ending in a consonant plus y change to -ies (baby, babies), and some ending in -f change to -ves (leaf, leaves). - ← previous: [Irregular verbs: goed, brung and other brave mistakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/) - next →: [Grammar puzzles, part one](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)