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sindresorhus / irregular-plurals

Map of nouns to their irregular plural form
MIT License
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Sheep etc. are not irregular, just uncountable #8

Open iankronquist opened 8 years ago

iankronquist commented 8 years ago

Countability is a really interesting feature of the English language. The [Cambridge dictionary][0] has a good explanation with examples. Uncountable nouns are not irregular, they just obey a different set of rules than most nouns. Other examples of uncountable nouns erroneously included on the list include fish, elk, and salmon.

If you're not convinced from a grammatical argument, consider the idea that sheeps and fishes are real words, they just don't mean what you would guess at first. Perhaps you should have another list with the key uncountable. That way if someone is writing a spellchecker with your library they don't mark sheeps as wrong.

[0]http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/nouns-countable-and-uncountable

Tyriar commented 8 years ago

I looked in to this a little when improving the definition of irregular plurals. Making a non-countable-words repo/file is a way this could go with plur depending on that as well.

Qix- commented 8 years ago

Not sure that holds up. Your linked article addresses countable and uncountable nouns; I think sheep is an exception (sheeps shows up as a spelling error for me, anyway). Google doesn't like it, either. FreeDictionary redirects it, and I can't find any supporting material about sheeps being correct.

I understand what you're saying, though. It should be a concern when accepting changes.

Qix- commented 8 years ago

For instance, fish is in there - fishes can be correct as a plural. Should be taken out - it's contextual.

iankronquist commented 8 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean by google doesn't like it, and I'm pretty sure that a plural should redirect to the singular. Unfortunately I can't find words categorized by countability in the dictionaries I regularly consult, which is odd because if I were an English language learner I would be stumped.

I judge sheep to be uncountable because, well, it acts that way and many herd animals are uncountable. It would be great if we had an citeable source, though.

Qix- commented 8 years ago

Check this out. Seems to be due to etymology, and is anomalous.