We saw this was the case with the word “chief” in my last article. Frequently, when a new word is borrowed into English, it takes the regular plural form. This might leave you with the question, “Why didn’t the plural become mooses?” So in classic English fashion, the foreign word for the new animal was borrowed into English. When English settlers who moved to the new world encountered moose for the first time, they had no word for these animals because they don’t exist on the British isles. Moose are animals which don’t exist in most of Europe. The word “moose” came into English from an Algonquin language spoken in North America. If you aren’t from the parts of North America & Northern Europe where moose roam, you have probably never seen one and never thought about what to call more than one of them. You could be forgiven for thinking that the plural for moose was meese. Old English words underwent sound changes that leave us with irregular plural forms. Newer English words don’t change the same. The word “moose” is not a native Old English word. The plural form of moose is not meese because moose was borrowed into English from a native American Algonquin language. You might assume that, like the word “goose” whose plural is geese, the word “moose” would form its plural as meese. ![]() This word might give you trouble when you first meet it. We’ll continue along in the same vein this time around by discussing the plural for the word “moose”. My last article talked about the plural for the word “chief”.
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