Unusual Plurals

[!quote]
one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, goes the Dr.Seuss children's story. Why isn't it two fishes?

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Life on the farm

sheep

After all, they are almost always in a group. When you have one sheep, you can also call it a ram or a ewe, and make those nouns plural by adding an -s: rams and ewes.

对于sheep 这种比较大的，相对好数的，因为它们总是成群出现，所以复数形式也是sheep。如果要表示单个个体用另外的区分了单复数形式的词表示。
ram：公羊
ewe：母羊
lamb：小绵羊

两种不规则的复数变化形式：

1. foot：feet；tooth：teeth
2. mouse：mice

The German influence

English came from German roots. German grammar changes the vowel sound in the middle of the word to show it is plural.

goose->geese
man->men

Sometimes a consonant changes, as with words that end in an f sound, such as leaf. The voiceless sound f takes on a voiced quality, or v and an s sound is added to the word.

autumn leaves and sharp knives.

Another way to make plurals in English is to add the suffix -en

brother -> brethren：复数形式除了词尾有变化，前面的部分也有变化
child -> children
ox->oxen

Words of foreign origin

from Latin

Words that end in -us drop that ending and add -i to become plural

fungus -> fungi 真菌 （如蘑菇）
cactus -> cacti 仙人掌

For words that end in -um, the ending changes to -a

datum -> data
medium -> media

文档

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问题

原句	问题	解答
what happened to our neat rule for making words plural?	为什么是 words plural，而不是plural words？或者 making plurals？
These are words that come from Old English.	为什么这里是come，而不是came？在English came from German roots. 中为什么是came？

资源

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