Bird, birds; goose, geese; deer, deer (#187, Topic L)

The Parade, a Sunday supplement, has an "Ask Marilyn" column with readers' writing in with interesting questions intended to stump the columnist, said to have an 180+ IQ. The title in today's entry, above, carries two implicit questions: How are these words related? How are they different? They are related because they represent three singular-plural pairs; they are different because, in each case, the plural is formed in a manner not shared by the other two. When I was walking on the golf course this morning, I realized that, in my post yesterday (#186), I failed to mention birds, which, from time to time, also congregated on the lawn when I walked by. Then, a strange thought struck me. For the word bird, its plural is formed by adding s, simple and straight-forward. But, this is not so with the word goose, whose plural form is not gooses, but geese. For the word deer, its plural form is the same as its singular form. In my walk this morning, I encountered a doe and two fawns -- they stood unmoved as I walked by, barely 6 feet from one of the fawns. A rare occasion which I cherish. But, as I write this, another strange thought occurred to me -- how strange the English language is. For a simple word deer, one must commit to memory that (1) its singular and plural forms are identical; (2) a male member is a buck, a female member, a doe; and a young member, a fawn; and (3) a buck, a doe, and a fawn are members of the same family. Chinese, in comparison, is simplicity itself. Deer is 鹿; a buck, 公鹿; a doe,母鹿; a fawn, 小鹿 -- singular and plural are the same, their gender and maturity are clearly denoted, their being members of the same family is obvious. Similarly, in English, one must learn, as between singular and plural, horse and horses; as to gender and maturity, stallion, mare, and colt/filly; their Chinese equivalent are, as to be expected, simply 馬, 公馬, 母馬, 小馬. Rooster/cock, hen, and chick in English become, not unexpectedly, 公雞,母雞,小雞 in Chinese. Who says English is easy and Chinese difficult? The reverse, it seems to me, is so.