I was going to write a blog post about why there is no plural of sheep, as it was a conversation we were having the other day. I did some research and started reading all about “The prehistoric plural *skǣpu normally lost its final vowel in Old English, so that nominative and accusative singular and plural became identical.” (OED) And ‘long stemmed nouns’ and ‘long vowels’ (ee in sheep) or short vowels followed by consonants (o in folk) and so on and, well, quite frankly, I lost the will to live. But it is all to do with mutations (like the X Men) and Germany, and where you put your tongue: “Goose comes from an ancient Germanic word that underwent a process called “mutation” or “umlaut”. When it was made plural, an /i/ or /j/ sound was added, causing the tongue to rise in preparation for making that sound, and changing the “oo” to “ee”…
Still awake? Well, if you want to know more than I suggest you ask the font of all knowledge Google and see what come up. But here are a few others (Terri) which might be useful to put in your knowledge base: Salmon, Moose, Fish (hmm), Deer, Cattle, Bison, Pike, Plankton and Squid and there are others that are not related to animals but, frankly, life is too short so here is a photo of Jack investigating some donations for Solidarity Symi and giving them his seal of approval.
Seals is the plural of seal by the way, just so you know. And here are other photos, for example the sunrise and cloud of Tuesday morning when I went up to hill a-wandering at 6.15. I was back before the actual sun-up over the mountain, but had a pleasant walk. I timed myself this time, as I had been meaning to do for a while, and found it was 25 minutes to the Kantina from the house, and then 15 minutes back down again at a reasonably fast pace. That’s not too bad for a bit of aerobic exercise before breakfast.
And then onwards through Tuesday and the cruise ship came in followed by the Panagia Skiadeni and the Sea Dreams Symi, so there were day-trippers and cruise-trippers on the island through the morning and into the afternoon. Not that I saw any from up on my perch where, after some work in the morning I relaxed with some story editing in the afternoon.
As you can see, a slow news day from the desk. But for anyone who doesn’t do the dreaded Facebook and who is on Symi, there’s a meeting of Solidary Symi on Wednesday at 14.00 at the Symi Visitor office and repeated again at the same time on Thursday to discuss winter plans, if you want to go along. That’s me, short post today as I need to go and read up on why there is no plural for rice. Or is there?
