On Monday 19 May 2003 09:20, Fergus Wilde wrote:
On Sunday 18 May 2003 12:28 pm, Sven Burmeister wrote:
John wrote:
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On Saturday 17 May 2003 14:59, Dylan wrote: <SNIP>
I have a sheep in my field I have some sheep in my field
Sheep is the plural of sheep, and has a 'strong' plural for historic reasons. Many similar patterns, such as 'kine' as the plural of cow, are dead or dying, and most of us will speak of cows. They are very tasty fried in a little butter and garlic. Pounds is the plural of pound, dollars the plural of dollar, Francs the plural of Franc.
if you consult a corpus like the Survey Of English Usage, you'll find that in actual use terms for money as coins and notes tend to remain singular, especially slang tems. The clearest exceptions are the (extinct) shilling and florin. Just consider what you actually hear people say. "That'll be three pound fifty, please". Terms like bob, quid, nicker, etc... never pluralise. The same is true to a lesser extent in imperial weights. Most foreign monetary units do pluralise, whether or hey do in the native tongue - the Rand is probably the most obvious exception. The signifant issue is that The Pound as a currency acts differently from the term used as a unit. Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg