r/europe • u/TheRealMykola • Jan 25 '23 • 1 1 1 1 1

Little fish can overcome the greatest of odds with the right friends. Слава Україні. Political Cartoon

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110

u/Frequent_Owl_2923 Jan 25 '23

The plural of fish is fish when you refer to the same species. If you refer to different species, the plural is fishes.

And now you learned something today.

Also, Russia is depicted as an invincible shark, which it isn't.

9

u/sanchez2673 Jan 25 '23

I did no research whatshowever, my only info is from a reddit post I saw last week. It said what you said, except it claimed that if there are multiple species of fish, you CAN call them fishes (but also still fish). True or false?

23

u/Hs39163 United States of America Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

True. ‘Fishes’ would be used to emphasize that there are different kinds of fish, similar to ‘peoples’ vs ‘people’, but OP is still correct in using just ‘fish’.

The seed comment is overly pedantic and slightly wrong.

5

u/BetterEveryLeapYear Jan 25 '23

These are obviously the same species of fish anyway, countryfish.

2

u/PicardTangoAlpha Jan 25 '23

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea

Joy to you and me

23

u/Der_Krsto Jan 25 '23

Is this Neal degrasse tyson

13

u/Frequent_Owl_2923 Jan 25 '23

I'd wish. I would love to be an astrophysicist. Sadly, I’m just a tax lawyer.

5

u/ARoyaleWithCheese Netherlands Jan 25 '23

Yo I haven't paid any taxes in the last 10 years and I got a letter they wanna do an audit, any advice?

3

u/jackjizzle Denmark Jan 25 '23

*Eel deGrasse Tyson

5

u/Cluelessish Jan 25 '23

The annoying assumption that nobody else knows anything would indicate that, yes.

1

u/truthhrtsbutno1cares Jan 25 '23

Might I suggest to not assume that a person sharing infomation has made the assumption "that nobody else knows anything". If you read a comment by NDT or anyone else and you already know the information, smile and move on, don't get annoyed. I argue that if people continue to react negatively to knowledge being shared, less will be shared and that is an unfortunate situation.

2

u/Cluelessish Jan 25 '23

It was the ”And now you learned something today” that annoyed me. ”Did you know?” would not have annoyed me at all.

2

u/truthhrtsbutno1cares Jan 25 '23

Sure, I understand and I'd even say its justified to a certian degree. But what would be better? to be anoyed or to not care one way or the other? I could be annoyed I got downvoted even though I'm just trying to be positive and support the sharing of knowledge but, I don't care! I'm going post this comment and move on. I'll still try to be positive and support information and the sharing of knowledge, because I believe in that. Anyway, hope you have a good day!

1

u/bluethreads Jan 25 '23

I thought this was common knowledge at this point.

0

u/OnyxPhoenix Jan 25 '23

What a ridiculously arbitrary rule.

When it's different species of sheep are they called sheeps?

3

u/dead97531 Hungary Jan 25 '23 edited Jan 25 '23

The reason fish is plural too is because english is a germanic language. In the past it was fish - fishe and later fish - fish. You can see it in german : der Fisch - die Fische. The -e was left out in other words too like foot - foote -> foot - feete -> foot - feet.

3

u/Hootrb Cypriot no longer in Germany :( Jan 25 '23

Nope, but you would say "peoples" when referring to different groups of people!

2

u/bottleboy8 Jan 25 '23

different species of sheep

There's only one species of sheep.

1

u/xinxy Canada Jan 25 '23

Sheep are its own species. That's it. Much like dogs, they can have several breed types but they're not classified as different species. "Fish" have a huge variety of species...

1

u/stvbnsn United States of America Jan 25 '23

English grammar is mostly made up, if you can get the other party to understand it doesn’t matter what grammatical “rules” were followed or ignored.

-1

u/YourLovelyMother Jan 25 '23

And Ukraine is depicted as a little harmless fish, which it also isn't.

1

u/rathat United States of America Jan 25 '23

Doesn't this depend on if you are referring to the fish as fish in general or as different kinds of fish? You can have different kinds of fish and still call them fish. If you are talking about the kinds of fish, then you can say fishes.

1

u/schnokobaer Jan 25 '23

The real TIL is always in the comments