Only The Ones With Flawless English Can Score A Perfect 21/21 In This Plural Word Trivia
This trivia serves as a commemoration of the moment English learners found out that the plural of the word ‘fish’ is not actually what they thought it would be…
Just as someone thinks they have mastered English, a bunch of irregular plural versions of nouns come up and ruin it. The nouns that don’t follow the usual rule of making them plural come as a surprise at times, since some of those words are not used so much in daily life and we tend to use the usual rule. Some of them are English, and some of their etymologies go back to Latin.
Come and take this trivia quiz and let’s learn together!
All OK, as questions go, apart from the first and the last; both criterium and fishes are acceptable alternatives in some circumstances..
Yep, wasn't it like "fish" is the "usual everyday plural" of "fish" (like, the edible ones you buy in a supermarket), and the rarer form "fishes" used more in zoological context when describing different sorts of fish?
Load More Replies...Never mind that english is my second language, my third is latin and that helped a lot.
19/21. But hey, as a third language I learned not too bad. Probably much better then I would have done with the first language I learned.
There is no singular of series - that's kind of the point of things happening in series.
But we aren't talking about the things, we're talking about the series of things itself, whether there's one of them, two of them or 100 of them.
Load More Replies...tuna is the mass noun for the meat and tunas is the count noun for the fish animals as individuals
Load More Replies...Someone downvoted you for this? Yes, it can be used as a group term, as opposed to individual cacti/uses.
Load More Replies...I stopped on question 1. “Fish” has two acceptable plurals: “fish” and “fishes”. They’re not fully interchangeable—their usage is slightly different—but there is overlap. So both should be marked as correct answers. Don’t make a tricky language quiz if you’re not prepared to research every question and answer to make sure you’re not overlooking something.
21/21. Then again my mother was a high school English teacher for 25 years so I better have got a good score.
#9 THAT'S A RAT! I love how often this happens. n4scgse21i...890700.jpg
Merriam-Webster's English Dictionary lists "cactuses" as an acceptable plural, and it is generally accepted as proper in American English. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cactus
Load More Replies...hmm generally the singular and plural being the same implies a mass noun/substance, whereas the -es ending implies a count noun or creature/entity. Fish (substance/food); fishes (animals), and 'many fish' (animals) ... vs "a lot of fish" (substance or animals)... Same for tuna. Tuna (food), tunas (animals alive still)... etc.
21/21... african here. Anyway this is mostly latin/greek. Germanic words like fish/wolves/geese etc are quite regular. I was surprised to not see roof/rooves/roofs/hoof/hooves etc.
Both cacti and cactuses are grammatically correct plural forms of cactus.
19/21, I missed the last one, "criteria", and the "calf" one (I wasn't sure if the plural of the animal was the same as for the body part)
Did it say it wasn't Mice when you did it? Maybe the system had a funny five minutes as it accepted Mice as the correct answer when I did it.
Load More Replies...I just missed the last question. I don't think I've ever had more than one "criteria" at a time.
The first one is stupid. WTF is an "everyday plural"? And then the explanation says "fishes" is also correct!
Yes? Just like the explanation says, "fish" is singular or plural & "fishes" is the plural of multiple species together
Load More Replies...To quote *"Loaves and fishes" is a reference to a biblical story in which Jesus fed a crowd using loaves of bread and fish*
The biblical stories were not written in English. The translation that most people quote is the King James version; it was done at the behest of King James (duh), the first of England and the sixth of Scotland. It was done in the early 17th century, and the usage was deliberately made to sound kind of old-fashioned.
Load More Replies...All OK, as questions go, apart from the first and the last; both criterium and fishes are acceptable alternatives in some circumstances..
Yep, wasn't it like "fish" is the "usual everyday plural" of "fish" (like, the edible ones you buy in a supermarket), and the rarer form "fishes" used more in zoological context when describing different sorts of fish?
Load More Replies...Never mind that english is my second language, my third is latin and that helped a lot.
19/21. But hey, as a third language I learned not too bad. Probably much better then I would have done with the first language I learned.
There is no singular of series - that's kind of the point of things happening in series.
But we aren't talking about the things, we're talking about the series of things itself, whether there's one of them, two of them or 100 of them.
Load More Replies...tuna is the mass noun for the meat and tunas is the count noun for the fish animals as individuals
Load More Replies...Someone downvoted you for this? Yes, it can be used as a group term, as opposed to individual cacti/uses.
Load More Replies...I stopped on question 1. “Fish” has two acceptable plurals: “fish” and “fishes”. They’re not fully interchangeable—their usage is slightly different—but there is overlap. So both should be marked as correct answers. Don’t make a tricky language quiz if you’re not prepared to research every question and answer to make sure you’re not overlooking something.
21/21. Then again my mother was a high school English teacher for 25 years so I better have got a good score.
#9 THAT'S A RAT! I love how often this happens. n4scgse21i...890700.jpg
Merriam-Webster's English Dictionary lists "cactuses" as an acceptable plural, and it is generally accepted as proper in American English. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cactus
Load More Replies...hmm generally the singular and plural being the same implies a mass noun/substance, whereas the -es ending implies a count noun or creature/entity. Fish (substance/food); fishes (animals), and 'many fish' (animals) ... vs "a lot of fish" (substance or animals)... Same for tuna. Tuna (food), tunas (animals alive still)... etc.
21/21... african here. Anyway this is mostly latin/greek. Germanic words like fish/wolves/geese etc are quite regular. I was surprised to not see roof/rooves/roofs/hoof/hooves etc.
Both cacti and cactuses are grammatically correct plural forms of cactus.
19/21, I missed the last one, "criteria", and the "calf" one (I wasn't sure if the plural of the animal was the same as for the body part)
Did it say it wasn't Mice when you did it? Maybe the system had a funny five minutes as it accepted Mice as the correct answer when I did it.
Load More Replies...I just missed the last question. I don't think I've ever had more than one "criteria" at a time.
The first one is stupid. WTF is an "everyday plural"? And then the explanation says "fishes" is also correct!
Yes? Just like the explanation says, "fish" is singular or plural & "fishes" is the plural of multiple species together
Load More Replies...To quote *"Loaves and fishes" is a reference to a biblical story in which Jesus fed a crowd using loaves of bread and fish*
The biblical stories were not written in English. The translation that most people quote is the King James version; it was done at the behest of King James (duh), the first of England and the sixth of Scotland. It was done in the early 17th century, and the usage was deliberately made to sound kind of old-fashioned.
Load More Replies...
30
64