[HN Gopher] A parliament of owls and a murder of crows: How grou...
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A parliament of owls and a murder of crows: How groups of birds got
their names
Author : notnice
Score : 99 points
Date : 2024-01-28 19:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.themarginalian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.themarginalian.org)
| countWSS wrote:
| These are "poetic terms", people usually use "flock of X", which
| is far more approachable. Using archaic terms with collective
| nouns is uncommon even in literary prose:
|
| e.g.
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=flock+of+geese...
|
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=flock+of+crows...
| rightbyte wrote:
| My pet theory is that English is so devolved (right term?)
| grammar wise that English teachers pick obscure stuff to study.
|
| In languages like Italian etc there is a never ending list of
| things to study.
| ithkuil wrote:
| English grammar and phonology is also much more complicated
| than what people give it credit for. There is also a general
| confusion between descriptive and prescriptive rules.
|
| The same goes for other languages, like Italian.
|
| My impression is that the main difference between English and
| other languages is the lack of an (central) authority that
| can tell you what the language "is" and what it "isn't" and
| that gives off the feeling that there isn't much to say about
| the language other than random stuff arbitrary people make
| up.
|
| But I'm pretty sure there are tons of people who study the
| languages (including English!) In good faith with
| professionalism and sobriety.
|
| An accessible example of it is Dr. Geoff Lindsay
| rightbyte wrote:
| It is harder to sound important, intellectual and well
| educated in English, since it is easier to sound important,
| intellectual and well educated.
|
| In many languages there are some obscure grammar that you
| need to get right to sound smart. Like a filter for people
| with university studies. A in group out group thing. Secret
| club handshake.
|
| My point is that English teachers try their best to emulate
| that, but they don't have much to work with, so it comes
| down to trivia.
| arethuza wrote:
| I thought the standard way to sound "important,
| intellectual and well educated" was to use quotes and
| phrases from other languages? ;-)
| mattlondon wrote:
| Just using proper enunciation and avoiding slang goes a
| _long_ way for English speakers.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I've lately been surprised by how many native English
| speakers don't understand the rules I learned as a child
| regarding:
|
| "I" vs. "me", and
|
| "who" vs. "whom".
|
| EDIT: Also, "me" vs. "myself".
|
| Maybe working with compilers means I'm unusually
| comfortable with English grammar rules?
| briHass wrote:
| I realized that I owe a debt to my mother for
| consistently correcting me as a child on I/me, they/them
| and other subtle rules. I don't have to think about the
| rule, the incorrect word just sounds 'wrong'.
|
| The downside is that I notice it easily in speeches or
| other talks given by otherwise intelligent individuals.
| If frequently repeated, it can be jarring, similar to an
| excess of 'um' or 'like'.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I noticed there has been (relatively recently) a
| overcorrection of "John and me" to "John and I",
| independently of whether the "I" is nominative or
| accusative.
|
| - Who saw it? - John and I! (correct)
|
| - With whom did Mary go? - With John and I! (what? why?)
|
| If the speaker doesn't really understand deeply what is
| the reason why you'd use "I" or "me", then all the rules
| around that sound arbitrary and they will make an effort
| to "clean up" their speech in order to not be labeled
| ignorant, but they will make another mistake that only
| truly annoying nitpickers like me will complain about,
| and that won't make any difference :-)
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > - With whom did Mary go? - With John and I! (what?
| why?)
|
| Or, equally painfully, "With John and _myself_! " (What?
| The speaker was also the subject of the sentence?)
|
| THB I'm pulled between two incompatible positions:
|
| (1) Nobody has a right to define "proper" English
| language. The language's grammar is literally however a
| plurality of people use it.
|
| vs.
|
| (2) There _is_ a "proper" English; it's what we were
| taught in elementary school in the 1970's. Failing to
| adhere to those grammar rules (e.g., when to use "myself"
| or "whom") is objectively incorrect.
|
| This article [0] seems to capture my thoughts nicely.
|
| [0] https://thewritepractice.com/cs-lewis-language/
| ithkuil wrote:
| I don't find that use of "myself" painful, provided it's
| done in the right context / dialect (I heard that used at
| lot in Ireland)
| Clamchop wrote:
| We learn these rules in school, although the degree to
| which students care varies.
|
| But, I was deprogrammed of my prejudice in University
| linguistics courses (highly recommend). What I learned is
| that speech is primary and it comes in many varieties
| (aka dialects) with different rules, and because textual
| communication has become the norm, we increasingly see
| these written.
|
| It's a mistake to assume that a construction is
| ungrammatical just because it doesn't follow the rules of
| prestige English. Of course other varieties have subtly
| different rules. Many don't ever use "whom", for example,
| and it would be eyebrow-raising if you did. You can think
| of it as register or code switching, if it helps.
|
| Similarly, orthography is just orthography, secondary to
| speech. It's a mistake to think that because someone
| wrote "should of," that they must not know the difference
| between "of" and "have". (In fact, that this
| orthographical error is virtually always made by a native
| speaker is some kind of signal.) Substandard for
| professional writing perhaps but that's all it is.
|
| Schools, with few exceptions, try to get everyone
| speaking and writing in prestige English. We generally
| don't appreciate variety and fail to see the parallels
| with, say, snuffing out foreign languages.
|
| I've since made the observation that it's curious that
| loving English almost always takes the form of being
| pedantic about prestige conventions and not instead
| enjoying the different flavors and their histories.
| Clamchop wrote:
| The more ways you avoid utilizing the word "use," the
| more others will perceive that you're leveraging English
| with class and sophistication.
| EdgeExplorer wrote:
| All language is "random stuff arbitrary people make up".
|
| "Rules" are just discovered patterns in the arbitrariness
| of language, convenient ways to capture and communicate how
| most people within a certain linguistic context express a
| certain idea. They are point-in-time observations of an
| evolving natural system, sharing much more in common with
| aphorisms like "April showers bring May flowers" than with
| the law of gravity or the tax code.
|
| The English language is whatever English speakers and
| hearers agree it is. No linguistic "authority" can stop the
| inexorable evolution of language.
|
| (Language evolution _has_ dramatically slowed, but that 's
| because of the printing press, the radio, the television,
| and the Internet creating massively larger and more durable
| linguistic communities than ever existed before, not
| because of authority.)
|
| And to the original point of this thread... all of these
| so-called names for groups are nonsense. "A group of owls
| is called a parliament"... by whom? No one ever. Thus a
| group of owls is not called a parliament or a stare or a
| hoot or anything else cute. A group of owls doesn't have a
| name because owls don't form groups. In the unlikely event
| someone discovered a large group of owls together, I am
| quite certain they would call it a "flock", no matter what
| someone who thought they were clever wrote in a book.
|
| Yeah, this is a trigger for me. (:
|
| Dr. Geoff Lindsey is a great reference. Another is John
| McWhorter, specifically his books The Power of Babel and
| Words on the Move.
|
| Linguists are scientists of the natural world, not law-
| makers.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > "Rules" are just discovered patterns in the
| arbitrariness of language, convenient ways to capture and
| communicate how most people
|
| Yes, that's a the descriptive rules. They are useful for
| people who are interested in understanding how the
| language works or for people who just want to be more
| effective at communicating.
|
| But then there are also "prescriptive rules", which are
| rules that don't necessarily reflect how the language
| works but are rather about how the language "ought to
| work". These are useful for people who want to create a
| distinction between an in-group and out-group, or
| generally just want to preserve how things used to be in
| the golden days of when they were young (or so they
| think).
| umanwizard wrote:
| In what way is English grammar more "devolved" than Italian?
| It has, for example, simpler verb morphology (conjugations
| etc.) but more complex syntax and word order.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Italian seem to have more distics grammar features common
| with Roman, that English has lost compared to proto
| germanic.
|
| I mean, verb conjugation of an irregular verb fills up a
| sheet of paper.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I heard a story on the radio about this a while back. The
| conclusion was that most of these terms were never commonly
| used. It was mostly smart bored people making things up to
| amuse other smart bored people (mostly nobility as they were
| the only ones who had wealth and time to waste on such
| nonsense). That doesn't mean that none of them were used or
| that it isn't fun, but don't put too much meaning into it.
| whstl wrote:
| Funny. I remember from school this being a mere curiosity and
| definitely not part of any the curriculum or book, although a
| couple teachers were awfully pedantic about it and wanted us
| to memorize some of those, while at the same time decrying
| its lack of usage, correlating with "kids these days" caring
| only about trendy lingo.
|
| Funny enough, this is probably the equivalent of modern
| "memes", but a few centuries (decades?) before...
| Suppafly wrote:
| Teachers wasted so much time making us memorize so much
| made up shit back in the day. I swear it's just because
| having minors occupied during the day is necessary for
| society to function. The actual stuff you need to learn
| could be squeezed into half as many years as schooling
| lasts, or half as many hours each day.
| umanwizard wrote:
| That makes sense and I (native English speaker) had always
| assumed it was something like that.
|
| I wish people would present this as what it is (a childish
| word game) rather than legitimately "part of English", so
| that learners of English don't think they have to memorize
| these and actually use them...
| acjacobson wrote:
| Some of them are, some not as much. There are certainly
| more obvious poetic devices like a "murder of crows" yet
| there are still many other collective nouns that are more
| "legitimately" part of English - pack, herd, pod, flock,
| swarm, and school for example. You don't have to know these
| terms as using 'group' would be understood - but they are
| common enough in books / documentaries.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You're right. I was referring to the more obviously made-
| up and never used ones.
| sorokod wrote:
| "usually" is stretching it a bit - fish, cows and children do
| not flock. Neither do puppies.
| bnralt wrote:
| I was disappointed that the article, despite it's title, never
| actually tells us how these group names came about. From some
| reading a while back, it seems that many started to be used
| after the 1968 book, An Exaltation of Larks, became popular. It
| was written by the Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton,
| and includes some terms he made up himself, as far as I can
| tell (the back cover states " In it you will find more than
| 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions...").
| adrian_b wrote:
| In the article it is shown that many of them were already
| present in one of the first printed books, in 1486: "The Book
| of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms".
|
| To go further back in time would be possible only for words
| that would happen to be mentioned in some ancient
| manuscripts, which is not very likely for words designating
| flocks of birds.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Oddly enough, the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, which are among
| the few sources of news of events in the 600-1000 period,
| spends considerable ink on describing unusual actions of
| flocks of birds. That and ecclesiastical events. You do get
| the occasional account of wars, kings, land deeds, etc. but
| the frequent mention of birds is odd. Perhaps they were
| seen as portentous?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Of course my favourite related meme is a picture of two crows and
| one flying away in the background with the title - Attempted
| Murder
| donaldihunter wrote:
| Only if there was probable caws
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Fantastic. :-)
| tussa wrote:
| Q: What do you call two crows on a bench?
|
| A: Attempted murder.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| A similar one that I found amusing is 3 crows eyeing a donut on
| the ground, deciding whether they should eat it, and the
| caption was "A tempted murder".
| bloat wrote:
| Interesting that the list of fowls and beasts also includes (if
| I'm reading it right):
|
| A bevy of ladies, A herd of harlots.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| The only time I ever see these group nouns being used is in
| articles about obscure group nouns.
| this_is_not_you wrote:
| I am almost sure they were invented so that people can randomly
| interject a conversation with "Did you know a group of X is
| called Y".
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Exactly. It's interesting only to monolingual people or
| (needlessly) concerned language-learners.
|
| "Did you know a group of sofas is called a"... just stop it.
| Use "group" and call it a day.
| mavhc wrote:
| Do you know what the name for a baby cow is? It's: baby cow
|
| and a male cow is called: a male cow
| Symbiote wrote:
| Separate words for male and female animals, and adult or
| infant ones, were (and are) useful for people who work with
| them -- farmers and so on.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I might be missing the point you're making, but isn't a
| baby cow called a calf, and a male cow called a bull?
| Unless castrated, in which case the bull is instead known
| as a steer.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| What's the word for a group of baby cows? What about a
| group of male cows that have been castrated?
|
| Let's use "group" and leave it at that.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| You can also make them up as you go along.
|
| A struggle of trees for a few scraggly trees clinging on to a
| rock way above the tree line. A knob of nudists for, well, for
| a group of nudists.
| onion2k wrote:
| _...and "a gaggle of geese" turns their migratory cries into
| delicious onomatopoeia._
|
| Geese are a gaggle when they're on the ground, but a 'skein' when
| they're flying in a v-shaped formation in the sky.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| Absolutely!
| vdaea wrote:
| Who else knows "murder of crows" because of the Simpsons?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I know it because of Incubus:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Crow_Left_of_the_Murder...
| Infernal wrote:
| The band Incubus for me
| gherkinnn wrote:
| A Series of Unfortunate Events 7: The Vile Village for me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vile_Village
| fipar wrote:
| "Just like suicide" by Soundgarden for me, but only after I was
| able to read the story about the crow flying into Chris'
| window, probably about a decade after I first heard the song.
|
| An honestly, as with all such stories, who knows if it's real?
| Maybe the song is about something else. Still a great song!
| RugnirViking wrote:
| only a select few of them are actually ever used in my
| experience. Gaggle of geese, for example. And by reference,
| calling something else a gaggle would evoke the chaotic waddling
| and noisiness of geese, for example referring to a gaggle of
| schoolchildren
| samus wrote:
| Even speakers of Sinitic languages, where usage of measure
| words is grammatically required, are often not aware of all the
| "correct" ones, and commonly use more generic ones. Ain't
| nobody got time for that :)
| jbaber wrote:
| I always remember this possibly-poem when tems of venery come up
|
| https://jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/collective-...
| jijijijij wrote:
| They missed _a flamboyance of flamingos_!
| dghughes wrote:
| If you like this type of stuff or history of words try the Rob
| Words YouTube channel he has a lot of this stuff often presented
| in a lighthearted funny way.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@RobWords
| forinti wrote:
| A feel that a parliament of crows would be more fitting. When do
| you see many owls together anyway?
| abhinavk wrote:
| They only meet together when the parliament is in session.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's a fun concept but it goes wrong when people think these are
| the only correct terms to use. Enforcing someone's whimsical fun
| as a language norm is a misunderstanding.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I claim that all the terms where "of X" is usually appended are
| only used poetically.
|
| When someone says "the herd seems unsettled today", you know
| they're a farmer worried about their cows.
|
| No-one looks outside their office window and says "what's that
| murder up to?"
| jl6 wrote:
| Poetic use is a distant second behind "did you know" articles.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > No-one looks outside their office window and says "what's
| that murder up to?"
|
| To be fair, if I were to see a group of crows outside my
| office, that is exactly the kind of thing I might say to my
| apathy of coworkers for amusement.
| raldi wrote:
| What about a school of fish?
| infradig wrote:
| A parliament of owls seems a confusion with Chaucers's Parlement
| of Foules (which derives from Persian poetry). Anyway as the
| article states it's a stare of owls.
| blame-troi wrote:
| Sadly we still live in times where "superstition was the primary
| sensemaking tool for causality -- an organizing principle for
| life".
| lou1306 wrote:
| > "a parliament of owls" draws on ancient Greek mythology, in
| which an owl accompanies Athena -- the goddess of wisdom and
| reason, representing freedom and democracy across the Western
| world.
|
| This is rich, given that Athenians never had a proper Parliament.
| The Ecclesia was not a representative body. Just goes to show how
| silly this whole concept really is.
| dghf wrote:
| > Discernible through the confounding Old English
|
| Middle English, not Old English.
|
| > Half a millennium after Juliana Barnes died an unknown nun in
| an English convent on a planet without clocks, calculus, or
| democracy
|
| I'm pretty certain the fifteenth century had clocks.
| TheCondor wrote:
| How do we add new ones? I have been advocating for "a happiness
| of poodles" amongst my friends, but it needs to go wide for more
| usage traction.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I'm leaning more towards "an oodle of poodles" myself.
| tokai wrote:
| Following the Ukraine war I have taken to call a group of drones
| for a murder of drones.
| chx wrote:
| Remember, it's only a murder of crows if there's probable caws.
| sethammons wrote:
| I had heard the term murder of crows originates due to their
| relations with wolves: they will lead wolves to prey and take
| some of the killings.
| sowbug wrote:
| Chinese depends on a similar language feature. You might have
| "two Zhi dogs" but "three Ben books" because books and dogs
| have different measure words. I believe this is more important in
| Chinese than English because Chinese overloads relatively few
| sounds to represent its vocabulary, so the extra word paired with
| a noun helps disambiguate it from its many homophones.
| acheong08 wrote:
| As an example:
|
| Liang Zhi Gou - liang zhi gou - two dogs
|
| Liang Tiao Gou - liang tiao gou - two ditches
|
| The weird thing is, I've definitely heard people use "Tiao "
| for dogs and fish as well. It gets confusing with all the
| special cases
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