• Redex@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Who decides stuff like this? Who’s like “hmm, yeah a group of owls is definitely a parliament”

  • Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I love you, English as my second language, but you cray cray and I ain’t doing all of that.

      • davidgro@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        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.”

        • Skua@kbin.earth
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          5 months ago

          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

            • Skua@kbin.earth
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              5 months ago

              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

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    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

    • dave@hal9000@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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?

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        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.