[169/365] moose

[cosmolinguist]

I think when I remember today it's going to be as the day where I got a big tableful of bisexuals inthe pub to talk for a long time to the point of literal hysterics about moose.

What's the plural of moose (this is the only part that's my fault! but it started us off), how many moose does a Manchester tram weigh (75.8 apparently) and how many moose could fit in Yorkshire so as to cover its whole surface area (23 x 10^9 I think).

Comments

[draxil]

I think someone should test the Yorkshire thing. Not *just* to make Yorkshiremen cross, but for science!

[softfruit]

It is their moosey fate

[draxil]

Tehe.

[silveradept]

Moose! Not something I see around here, but the deer are plenty to have to deal with without adding on significantly more bulk and less gives-a-fork.

[cosmolinguist]

It started because I was wearing a t-shirt (which I don't even like!) my parents got me when visiting family in northern Minnesota; it has silhouette drawings of a wolf and a bear and a moose on it.

[silveradept]

I wonder why that sparked the discussion. It sounds perfectly normal to me, but then again, I'm also Midwesterner.

[haggis]

I told my mum about this and she wants to know why sheep is its own plural, if you happen to know that 😀

[cosmolinguist]

I don't know why sheep or moose are their own plurals, actually. I asked the OED about "sheep" and it says "The prehistoric plural *skǣpu normally lost its final vowel in Old English, so that nominative and accusative singular and plural became identical."

This is a big feature of the change from Old to Middle English; Old English had tons of different endings on its verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. But there was a trend toward stressing the first syllable of words and that meant all the endings became less easily distinguished and started to disappear. And if the ending was how singular and plural were distinguished, the word would end up being the same for both.