Random Thoughts Thread

[Fragony]

From the OED:

OE. gós (pl. gés)
Narragansett moos (= Abenaki mus, Penobscot muns)

Moose is not a native English, or even (Indo)European word.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

OE. mús fem. (pl. mýs)
The word for mouse used to sound like modern "moose", before u → ɑʊ.

Same with the word for house: OE. hús



So why don't "mouse" and "house" have the same plural?

Well, in the case of the modern computer peripheral they can.

But actually in Old English the plurals of the two words were different to start, as you see above.

For "mice" it seems to go back to Proto-Germanic:



Then what about house? As you see above, in Old English the singular and plural were identical. It's just that over time people added on the generic "-(e/a)s" English plural to help differentiate.

Maybe people just didn't assume one has more then one house for a straighr plural to exist, with mice you do. Language is easy untill you start thinking about it, despite screwing up I can speak a few pretty decently for common use of them, not good but I get by. I naturally adopt these these things I think, it somehow makes sense