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クリスチャンの英語の小噺(英語ブログ)1月

Good morning!

皆さんお元気ですか?

株式会社ヒトコト社 英会話のトーキーのクリスチャン・オーウェンです。

クリスチャン・オーウェン

Owen Christian

今日のブログは英語バージョン

数の数え方のお話です。

Counting things in English is very simple. For example, one dog, two dogs, three dogs etc. In Japanese it is much more confusing, even for native speakers. Eight movies and eight pens are completely different !

Unfortunately for English speakers, we have an equally confusing rule for group names (collective nouns) for animals. Each mammal (animal, bird or sometimes fish) has a different group name. Some of the names are very interesting, but because there are so many of them, most people don’t even know or remember them !
For example :
A flock of birds
If it is just birds it is a ‘flock’ but if you are describing a certain variety of bird then it becomes very confusing !
A gaggle of geese
A murder of crows
A host of sparrows
As you can see, it is so difficult to remember that most people will just say ‘a flock of geese’.
There are many interesting collective nouns but please don’t try to remember them all !
A gaggle of geese

A gaggle of geese(写真:PhotoAC)

PAGETOP