Re: Some singular plurals (was: Creating conlang grammars using prototypes)

On 10/6/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> 'Bus' is monosyllabic. Everyone knows monosyllabic words have umlauted
> plurals, don't they?    :)
>
> man ~ men
> goose ~ geese
> tooth ~ teeth
> mouse ~ mice
> house ~ hice
(So in our family, at least when talking about hice in the game of Monopoly)

> moth ~ myth
> etc.
>
> So:
> bus ~ bys
Perhaps we need something similar to the German "Gesellschaft zur
Stärkung der Verben" (Society for Strengthening Verbs): a society
which promulgates the restoration of umlaut plurals which have fallen
out of use as well as the introduction of this phenomenon in words
which may not have had it historically.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>