So what’s the big deal here, you may be asking? Where shall we start, Yankee Boy? First, there’s the little linguistic problem in that Chinese does not permit plurals. That’s right. You can say “tree” but you can’t say “trees.” Now isn’t that a bit inconvenient if, say, you’re calling for help and you’re lost in a forest? No problem. The Chinese language has lots of terms that group similar things together. I could say, “bunches and bunches” and just let you figure it out for yourselves, assuming I can’t convince you to take the five years to learn to express yourself in rudimentary Chinese. I didn’t say, read or write anything in Chinese. That’s a completely different matter. No, just to make yourself understood in thee street or in a fast food restaurant. By then you should be good with the four tones (yes, Chinese is a “sung” language, so warm up your larinyx as we go forward.)
Let’s say you need to count one to ten. Yes, Chinese can count without plurals: one tree, two tree, three tree, four… To do that much you have to be singing:
- one – yi = high pitched level tone song word
- two – er (say “are”) = rapid descent high to low tone song word
- three
- ten – shir = rapid falling with heavy tongue-curled back hissing, ending in an r soft growl
Give it a go. Say 21. Sing along with me now: “er-shir-er.” Did you get that? “Are (sharp falling)-shir (high then falling tone)-are (sharp falling). Rather distinctive, no? So now we can sing a few numbers.
So the Chinese have no plurals. But what they do have, and they have literally thousands of these, is “collections,” terms referring to groups of things, hence, “plurals.” This is a nice solution we have dabbled with in English. We have our basics:
- a flock of geese
- a school of fish
- a herd of horses
- a bunch of kids
Perhaps less widely known is: a ‘pride’ of lions, a ‘murder’ of crows (this also includes their cousins, the rooks and ravens), an ‘exaltation’ of doves (this includes larks, too),
How about a ‘parliament’ of owls?
Now consider the baboons… They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive, and least intelligent of all primates. Now, do you know what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons? Believe it or not… it is a ‘congress’!
As for the actual addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. of math, can the Chinese do it? Of course they can. They get “bunches” and “bunches” of results to whatever precision you ask for. That’s not the problem. If the calculated results are, say, “10,600 men are needed” then you just say “10,600 troop-man,” or “10,600 voter-man,” or “10,600 expendable-man, which in Chinese will sound OK.
I for one favor adding new collectives into English. Here are some of my favorite candidates:
- a discussion of crows
- a clutch of oak trees
- a flock of clouds
- a standtall of pines
edwardanderson 