On Mon, 2 Aug 2004 01:18:48 +0100, "Trevor Jeffrey"
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>[email protected] wrote in message
><[email protected]>...
>>
>>Dear Sirs,
>>
>>Zoo check enclosed as per your latest catalogue.
>>
>>Please ship me two mongee--
>>
>>Please ship me two mongoo--
>>
>>Please ship me a mongoose.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Carl Fogel
>>
>>P.S. Come to think of it, ship me another.
>
>pl mongooses
>
>TJ
>
Dear Trevor,
True, Dravidian words for animals do not use internal vowel
gradation to form plurals, which distinguishes them from our
few surviving Old English words for animals and anatomy,
such as man/men, woman/women (double), mouse/mice,
goose/geese, tooth/teeth, and foot/feet.
This internal vowel gradation should not be confused with
such pluralizations as knife/knives, life/lives, or
wife/wives, which involve voicing of consonants.
Nor should it be confused with the even rarer ox/oxen,
child/children pluralizations, which involve an otherwise
lost suffix and an excrescent -r.
Pedantically,
Carl Fogel