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Guy Courchesne
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
Posts: 9650
Location: Mexico City
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 Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:57 pm Post subject: The debate about fish(es) |
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What's appropriate where you are from for the plural form of fish?
Fish, or fishes?
I've seen dictionaries refer it to it both ways, but I use 'fish' for both plural and singular forms. A non-count noun the Big Book says.
Moose/Moose
Mouse/Mice
Goose/Geese
Troll/Trolls
Underwear/underwears? - only my uncle says that
EDIT: an uncountable noun as well. Also, a non-not uncountable noun
Last edited by Guy Courchesne on Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sekhmet
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 329
Location: Alexandria, Egypt
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| Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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Isn't it an uncountable noun??? (Or am I just talking carp??  )
Or can we just put it down to one of those stupid "English language" things like silent letters?? (Why do we have those, anyway????) Give me a nice phonic language like Arabic any day.... |
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Njord
Joined: 22 Jan 2005
Posts: 11
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
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| Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:28 pm Post subject: |
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| If you said "fishes," I would suspect that either you are a small child or you are trying to be cute. |
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Deconstructor
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 775
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| If you said "fishes" I'd think you're in the mob in Brooklyn. |
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Deconstructor
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 775
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Sekhmet"]Isn't it an uncountable noun??? (Or am I just talking carp?? ) |
You ain't talkin crap. It's a non-coun noun as long as it refers to a category. |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 339
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:41 am Post subject: |
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If wishes were fishes
and horses were courses
and proof of the pudding were indeed in the crust,
We'd all be a wishin'
to have gone a fishin'
and not counting uncountables like fishes and dust.
I know, I know........... don't give up my day job.  |
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Cardinal Synn
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 586
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:00 am Post subject: |
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Definitely fish for the plural.
Have you noticed that almost all fish names stay the same in the plural form? The only exceptions I can think of are eels, rays and sharks. Most mammals on the other hand do change in the plural form except sheep and deer. Maybe someone can think of more examples. |
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Njord
Joined: 22 Jan 2005
Posts: 11
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:30 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Most mammals on the other hand do change in the plural form except sheep and deer. Maybe someone can think of more examples. |
Off the top of my head, I can think of elk, bison, buffalo, wisent, moose (previously noted), and caribou. Looks like a whole class of mammals. |
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Cardinal Synn
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 586
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:37 am Post subject: |
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Ah yes, you're absolutely right. Must be a nationality thing - none of those occurs in my country. That's my excuse.
Must be more. Interesting how your examples seem to refer to a class of mammals, as you mentioned. I've just thought of another - antelope! |
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Sheep-Goats
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 1:56 am Post subject: |
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Pluralizing fish to "fishes" is like pluralizing people to "peoples" -- perfectly acceptable, but only valid for certain meanings (The fishes of the sea -- as opposed to those in the rivers and lakes; The peoples of Africa -- emphasizing that there are different tribes there). And in both cases what the student usually wants to say is "fish" (pl) or "people" (pl) anyway.
Without a context that's as far as the rule can go. |
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Roger
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Posts: 9138
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 2:21 am Post subject: |
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| Sheep-Goats wrote: |
Pluralizing fish to "fishes" is like pluralizing people to "peoples" -- perfectly acceptable, but only valid for certain meanings (The fishes of the sea -- as opposed to those in the rivers and lakes; The peoples of Africa -- emphasizing that there are different tribes there). And in both cases what the student usually wants to say is "fish" (pl) or "people" (pl) anyway.
Without a context that's as far as the rule can go. |
THis opinion is that of an amateur. I am right now reading "One hundred years of solitude" and the translator, who did an excellent job at rendering Gabriel Garcia Marquez' work into English consistently uses "gold fishes" in that part where one of the characters is in the habit of making fish-shaped objects from gold coins; I am sure the translator would have used the final -es' as plural marker even if the fish had been of the acquatic type.
I guess the problem lies in the origin of some of our English words: fish is one of those old Germanic words like man, woman, child, sheep, that require a special form to mark its plural version. With a monosyllabic word like 'fish', unlike 'man', you cannot form a separate plural form unless you changed the vowel as in 'man' versus 'men'. We have a similar problem with the word 'sheep' - what vowel could you substitute for 'ee'?
But English is inconsistent in more ways than just one: why do we often read "the used watercannon to quell the uprising?" Why isn't it 'cannons"?
Then again, there are loanwords from Greek and Latin that need special attention, which they don't always get in the required dose: many Americans don't know the singular of "phenomena"; I am also vexed by the use of the noun 'media' - which originally was the plural form of 'medium'. I can't bring myself to saying "the media haS reported..." |
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Guy Courchesne
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
Posts: 9650
Location: Mexico City
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 2:40 am Post subject: |
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I see this confusion a lot with words like curriculum, virus, data, formula. Few people I know will use what I thought were the correct plural forms for these. And yet...
http://www.learningstreams.com/ Has Home School Curriculums
Isn't viurs virii in its plural form? Data is already plural from datum. |
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distiller
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 249
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:31 am Post subject: |
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| Someone noted this earlier but the plural "fishes" refers to species of fish. As in when a biologist says, "There are over 250,000 fishes in the world" he is saying that there are that many species of fish. For individual fish that you want to express as more than one the correct term is "fish", at least that is my understanding of it. |
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Sheep-Goats
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 527
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 4:36 am Post subject: |
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| Roger wrote: |
| Sheep-Goats wrote: |
Pluralizing fish to "fishes" is like pluralizing people to "peoples" -- perfectly acceptable, but only valid for certain meanings (The fishes of the sea -- as opposed to those in the rivers and lakes; The peoples of Africa -- emphasizing that there are different tribes there). And in both cases what the student usually wants to say is "fish" (pl) or "people" (pl) anyway.
Without a context that's as far as the rule can go. |
THis opinion is that of an amateur. I am right now reading "One hundred years of solitude" and the translator, who did an excellent job at rendering Gabriel Garcia Marquez' work into English consistently uses "gold fishes" in that part where one of the characters is in the habit of making fish-shaped objects from gold coins; I am sure the translator would have used the final -es' as plural marker even if the fish had been of the acquatic type.
I guess the problem lies in the origin of some of our English words: fish is one of those old Germanic words like man, woman, child, sheep, that require a special form to mark its plural version. With a monosyllabic word like 'fish', unlike 'man', you cannot form a separate plural form unless you changed the vowel as in 'man' versus 'men'. We have a similar problem with the word 'sheep' - what vowel could you substitute for 'ee'?
But English is inconsistent in more ways than just one: why do we often read "the used watercannon to quell the uprising?" Why isn't it 'cannons"?
Then again, there are loanwords from Greek and Latin that need special attention, which they don't always get in the required dose: many Americans don't know the singular of "phenomena"; I am also vexed by the use of the noun 'media' - which originally was the plural form of 'medium'. I can't bring myself to saying "the media haS reported..." |
Since I'm not the only person who uses "fishes" and "peoples" in that specific way, and since the rule I gave has immense pedagogic value, perhaps it's more useful for EFL teachers than that pargraph of gook you produced about root words.
The truth is that once a word is adopted into English it often loses the plural/singular characterisitcs that it may or may not have had in its original language. We can say "kimonos" without anyone batting an eye, afterall, and that word is a lot newer to the language than "curriculum," which often maitains its originial Latin plural form and even "data" which almost never uses its original Latin singular form -- even in academic documents ("datum").
The truth is that there are many irregularities, that there are usually explanations to those irregularities, and that it's not that useful for students to know the explanations except in cases where understanding a "why" is somehow involved in the meaning of the sentence such as the case I mentioned with the special uses of "peoples" and "fishes."
So, in short, I don't know what kind of amatuer you're talking about. Amateur teacher, or amateur bullshitter? |
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Twisting in the Wind
Joined: 20 Oct 2003
Posts: 571
Location: Purgatory
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 5:20 am Post subject: Mouse? mice? or Meece? |
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| Does anyone know the plural for "Mouse," as in that thingie we use with the computer, not the animal? To say "I bought two mouses at the computer store" just doesn't sound right. Neither does "I bought two mice at the computer store." Any thots? |
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