Aboriginal (black) Australians have no system of counting. To them there is either one person or a mob of people. Then they talk of a big mob or a little mob. They didn't need numbers.
English has developed different names for groups of animals. Instead of saying "There is a GROUP of ducks" or "a group of birds" or a "group of horses", we have a large list of different names just to make it hard.
For example, a group of cattle is called a "herd of cattle". A group of fish is called a "shoal of fish". A group of birds flying is called "a flight", but if the birds are on the ground, they are "a flock".
My favourite is a "gaggle of geese". I sometimes talk about a "gossip of women", but that's my work and not recognised in English (yet).
To see a long list of different names applied to different animal groups to see what I mean, go here.
What do these names achieve that the term group doesn't? This is an example of stupidity in our English language. I doubt if any English speaking person could get them all correct.
What do you think?
Comments
Very true...
..thanx for shariing this value of information...
We have something sort of similar in Farsi (Persian). For counting different kinds of animals, in formal Farsi, we have different vocabulary. For example, if we want to say six camels, we say six + نفر + camels! It also sounds difficult to me.
In our Farsi books at school, we had a lesson to learn such words. For different animals, different words were used!
Anyway, thanks for the interesting blog post.
Have a nice time.
:)
I had no idea because...kekeke....my level of English is poorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
But I learn something from your blog. Thank you, dear.
Hello, this blog was very nice. I knew some of them...the ones that are important to me like ants and bees but I had never given any thought to the rest. Thanks for sharing.
nice to note this...
Thanks for sharing this! And I agree with noaslpls - it seems somebody has intentionally made English a little harder for leaners to learn. If only English were a bit easier to learn!!!
Then, could anyone here share some tips on how to use all of the words?!
Rofl, Robinoz, how about a group of men? Gossip of men too?
Interesting blog!
I thought it's "school of dolphins" since dolphins are so intelligent, LOL, but it in that list, it's a "pod of dolphins". Sometimes I think English native speakers just want to mess up we English learners with all these terms for group of animals. There's no other reasons. LOL.