If there's a flock of Sheep, they're still sheep, not sheeps. That said I believe I have said "load of Wigeons" before, despite retrospectively not necessarily agreeing with myself. Clearly this subject really is a little 'heavy' for any night...
If there were 2 Eurasian Teal, 3 Green-winged Teal and a Baikal Teal on a pond, then I might say "oh, there's some teals...", but if there was only one species of teal present, no matter how many individuals, I'd say "Teal" not "Teals".
Hi Craig, You raise an interesting point with these plurals.
I see where you are coming from, and basically agree. Referring to "Teals, Mallards, Wigeons", etc. simply sounds gauche; -because in fact it is.
When I'm out in the field I do tend to write down in my notebook, "Teals" if I see more than one, but I feel very uncomfortable in doing this. The reason I do it (quite truthfully) is that I want to record sometimes that there was more than one, but I'm too damned lazy to do an accurate count. I'd only count something if numbers were so relatively impressive (in whatever context) that I'd consider it worth the trouble. When for instance I visit Low Barns (a little wetland/ reedbed reserve up here), I don't really give a damn whether there are 8 Teal or 14, but if I encountered 48, that would be noteworthy enough to count them, in which case I should write "48 Teal" and accordingly feel rather more smug, in that I'd made a bit of an effort with both my recording and equally importantly, my grammar.
Cheers, Mike P.
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I know this is a bit heavy for Friday night but - Teals to describe plural is fine as far as Collins English Dictionary goes - it's either/or for that as far as the online and print versions claim. I'm not just covering my back because I used 'Teals' in my last post.
-- Edited by John Doherty on Friday 9th of March 2012 08:38:06 PM
