Are any of these good translations of “A murder of crows”?
No, of course not. There are some things that you can’t translate literally from English, and the eccentric system collective nouns for birds and animals springs to mind.
Sometimes in our language lessons, the question comes up: Do other languages have such an abundant (some might say ridiculous) armoury of words to describe groups of animals and birds?
The short answer is “probably not”.
Spanish, French, and German are more ancient than English as we know it, so of course they all have plenty of wonderfully rich idioms, but is there anything to rival the magnificence of a convocation of eagles; the aptness of an intrusion of cockroaches or a crash of rhinos; or the mischievousness of a brevity of Tory prime ministers? (OK, I just made that one up.)
Have you ever wondered how all these weird and wonderful expressions entered the English language? A lot of them can be traced back to The Book of St. Albans (late 15th century), otherwise known as The Book of Hawking, Hunting and Heraldry.
It gave long lists of the correct nomenclatures for talking about various aspects of courtly life. Detailed knowledge of how to reference not only a species of bird or animal but a group thereof, was considered seemly.
It was written at a monastery, so there are plenty of church-related mentions. It appears that the monks had been on the communion wine before coming up with some of the entries:
Nuns
“A superfluity of nuns” must have been tongue in cheek, but it made the edit.
Many have faded into obsolescence, but some are still in use today.
Geese
There are three distinct collective nouns for geese:
A wedge when they are swimming; a skein when in flight, and the onomatopoeic ‘gaggle’, when they are walking – when they finally have time to gabble to each other.
Baby animals
A litter of puppies. It is no coincidence that the same word has come to means three apparently different things: baby animals, who were often born onto a bed of straw; discarded rubbish (especially the straw after it has had puppies born all over it); and the portable bed, carried by servants, to transport the nobleman before the invention of the Range Rover. They all derive from the Latin for ‘bed’: lectus.
Bees and kittens
In the fifteenth century it was common to refer to a bike of bees. Linguist-historians think that this word fell out of favour only at the invention of the two-wheeler. The same logic can hardly be applied a kindle of kittens, as there were no references to its usage for a couple of centuries before the e-reader came along, but it’s nice, don’t you think, that such a pleasing word should have been brought back to life.
Crows
Speaking of resurrections, a murder of crows had hardly been used during the intervening centuries since it was originally coined for the Book of St Albans, but it has somehow re-entered the language as one of the obscure collective nouns that most people do seem to know about.
Fish
Linguists disagree on this but, the best sources I can find seem to think that a school of fish comes from an old English word scolu simply meaning a group, whereas as shoal comes from Greek via Dutch, schola, which carries the obvious meaning: "school". My understanding is that a school is a group of the same species of fish, whereas a shoal can be a mixed group of any aquatic creatures with gills. Marine mammals have their own group nouns; don’t get me re-started!
Collective nouns: grammatically singular or plural?
Most other languages – and indeed US English - use a singular verb when using a singular noun to refer to a group.
This differs from British English, partly. We can sometimes use a plural verb for a collective noun, as long as the implication is that the members of the group are acting as individuals:
“My family are all coming to the wedding.” [They are coming from different parts of the country]
However:
My family is very close knit.” [We are a single unit]
Similarly: In the UK we would say: “Tottenham are playing well this season” (please suspend your disbelief), whereas a US speaker would say “Tottenham is playing well”.
It is a singular noun, so the verb should really be singular, but this is known as notional agreement, where we recognise that all the players (plural) within the team (singular) are playing well.
Have some fun!
Good writers avoid clichés - like the plague (!) so it is common in novels to find the orthodox words being eschewed, and new ones being coined. Here are just a few that I have come across. (I collect nuggets of linguistic interest as other people collect toy cars)
A kaleidoscope of butterflies.
A bluster of bursars.
A condescension of cats…
It’s more fun making up one’s own than going to the trouble of learning the official ones, don't you think? Why not try it? See how creative you can be in collectivising, I don’t know, postmen, wild flowers, non-matching socks, football pundits…
In other languages?
Watch this space. I will, at some point soon, add to this topic with specific references to French / German / Spanish.
In the meantime, please get in touch with me if you or one of your preciousness of family or buoyancy of friends would like to find out about joining a SameSky language class – online, in person (Reading area) … or now there is the new opportunity to take a remote-learning course with us.
Andrew Wenger
SameSky Languages
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