As a professional copyeditor and all-around English nerd, I feel it is my responsibility to field this (probably rhetorical) question.
As the primary language of empire (both British and American), English has borrowed words from almost every language there is. With those words come different systems of verb conjugation and noun declension. And so it is that the noun "goose," from the Old English "gos," declines differently than "mongoose," from the Hindi "magus" and Prakit "mamgusa."
Why is the plural of mongoose "mongooses" and not "mongeese"?
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As a professional copyeditor and all-around English nerd, I feel it is my responsibility to field this (probably rhetorical) question.
As the primary language of empire (both British and American), English has borrowed words from almost every language there is. With those words come different systems of verb conjugation and noun declension. And so it is that the noun "goose," from the Old English "gos," declines differently than "mongoose," from the Hindi "magus" and Prakit "mamgusa."
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