I love you, English as my second language, but you cray cray and I ain't doing all of that.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Don't worry, virtually no first-language English speakers do either
About the only one of those I use (besides the regular ones like 'a flock of birds') is 'a murder of crows'. Usually in a statement like "We just witnessed a murder."
I think I generally operate on "it flies = flock", "it swims = shoal", and "it walks on land = herd". There are exceptions, but that's the broad approach
Agreed, although I think a school of fish is also pretty broadly used, no?
I would definitely recognise it and would not consider it weird if I heard someone say it, but I probably wouldn't instinctively reach for it myself. That's obviously just me though, not necessarily English speakers in general
Ah ok. I am not a native speaker, but would say I have a near native fluency in American English (moved here at 15 having already learned it before), and school of fish would be my go to, but shoal is the same as you said to me, sounds perfectly natural. Now that I am thinking about it though, it feels like every time I was near one (on a boat, or scuba diving), people said shoal, and in more abstract settings, school was more common. That's probably just me inventing a pattern though
Yeah all of these can be replaced with "group" with no loss in specificity.
Pretty much. There's no need to learn all these terms. When in doubt, just call the animal group a group. No one is going to care otherwise.
I'm Ojibway/Cree from northern Ontario in Canada
In English - a group of moose is just 'a group of moose' .... as far as I know, I've never heard of meese or mooses ... or else people just say two moose, three moose, four moose, etc.
In Ojibway/Cree - one moose is 'moose', because moose is an indigenous word .... a group of moose in my language is MOOSUK
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Just curious, is -uk just a general suffix to make anything plural, or this is just a one off thing here?
Yes it is for most words.
Goose is niska ... the plural is niskuk
Beaver is amisk..... the plural is amiskuk
It's not a hard rule but it applies to many things, objects and animals.
Ah thanks, that would explain seeing -uk in so many name places I guess
How could they leave out a Murder of Crows?
No doubt! Only the best group name ever.
Misread it as trump of baboons
Still works
We are all a rookery of crookery penguins on this blessed day.
Who decides stuff like this? Who's like "hmm, yeah a group of owls is definitely a parliament"
What's the collective noun for a group of politicians?
I thought it was a congress of baboons, but apparently that was a joke that has been circulated for a while now that everyone just accepted as fact.
A Parliament.
- A sanatorium
- A circus
- A gaggle
A pandemonium of parrots. 😂
Why are ferrets a business? Just what are they up to?
a flight of dragons
a wing of dragons
a doom of dragons
I don't know if it is still in print but there is a book that is a collection of collective nouns. The book is called An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton.
It is the same James Lipton who hosts the Inside the Actors Studio.
Crap, the thing was deleted. That's sad, it was nice
"Hey look, it's a bunch of [insert animal here]" is so much simpler.