Job Discussion Forums

[latefordinner]

No moss, that is indeed vocally reasonable, but leaves questions unanswered. If the King James Bible isn't a valid grammatical reference point, what is? The self-important opinion of just another FT in China? American televsion shows? What will be tomorrow's authority? How did it get this way? Can anyone here present a clear history of the evolution of the current use of fish as a plural?
I'm pefectly happy to accept that in current useage fish has replaced fishes as the plural form, but I've asked why and I haven't had a convincing answer. I suspected then (and more so now) that there isn't one, but then the more I teach grammar the less inclined I am to hear the music of the spheres in the logic of our language and the more to see the invisible foot of happenstance. <shrug> It makes it harder to make sense of the language when the language doesn't make sense at all, but that's what we have to work with.

[No Moss]

Well, would you accept that there's a difference between drinking all the wine in the world and drinking all the wines in the world? Either one sounds pretty good, but they mean different things.

I agree with you that language is defined by usage, and God knows the English language is a hodgepodge.

Peace be with thee, you tardy diner. And best wish for the holidays.

[Steppenwolf]

There are quite a few species in the animal kingdom that bear Germanic or other non-Romance language names with no plural marker:

- deer, moose, sheep (feel free to add your own nouns).

Then, there are some that have plural markers though not the -S borrowed from French:
- Louse, lice; mouse mice; hippopotamus, hippopotami.


If I remember well, someone else brought up the issue of "Fish" in our forum before. Arbitration was inconclusive!

[yamahuh]

Coincidentally I've taught a couple of lessons this past week about recognising countable and uncountable nouns, quantifiers, mass nouns etc and I was having a hell of a time with 'people'.
One thought is that if the noun has no plural form then it is uncountable.
One of the Chinese teachers said that if you can't count 'one' of something then it is uncountable - e.g one people doesn't work so 'people' would be uncountable, one person works so it is countable.

I was getting really confused by a couple of other exceptions which were making it impossible to come up with a cohesive answer for the students and then I remembered the rule.

Countable nouns satisfy the question "How many?"
Uncountable nouns satisfy the question "How much?"

Countable nouns:
How many apples, people, dogs, cats, cars, fish, sheep etc

Uncountable nouns:
How much water, rice, pasta, time, luggage, clothing, wine etc

'Fish' is countable but it is also a mass / collective noun, one fish, ten fish, a billion fish...

Can't say as I would ever say "How many fishes are there?" if I was referring to different kinds of fish but I would say "How many types / kinds of fish are there?"

[No Moss]

Yamahuh, I believe you have entered grammar hell.

[yamahuh]

You might be right
Am I wrong?

[The Voice Of Reason]

'Peoples' is like 'fishes'.

China has many cultural / ethnic groups = China has many peoples.

China has a very big population = China has a f***ing lot of people.

[yamahuh]