If the plural of mouse is mice then why is the plural of house houses and not hice?

Well what about all these:


pounce, blouse, bouse, brouse, chaus, chausse, clouse, couse, crouse, douse, dowse, fouse, gauss, grouse, haus, hause, hauss, house, klaus, knouse, kraus, krauss, krouse, louse, prouse, rouse, rousse, schaus, shouse, smouse, spouse, sprouse, straus, strause, strauss, strouse, youse,


alehouse, almshouse, backhouse, bathhouse, birdhouse, blockhouse, blouse, bunkhouse, cathouse, chophouse, clubhouse, courthouse, delouse, doghouse, dollhouse, dormouse, douse, espouse, farmhouse, firehouse, flophouse, gashouse, glasshouse, greenhouse, grouse, guardhouse, henhouse, hothouse, house, icehouse, jailhouse, lighthouse, louse, madhouse, mouse, nuthouse, outhouse, penthouse, playhouse, poorhouse, roadhouse, roughhouse, roundhouse, schoolhouse, smokehouse, souse, spouse, statehouse, storehouse, strauss, teahouse, titmouse, tollhouse, toolhouse, warehouse, whorehouse, and workhouse





???If the plural of mouse is mice then why is the plural of house houses and not hice?
Because...languages change in different ways, and language form plurals in different ways.





This is going to take a while, so sit back. It's a combination of rules and change.





First, nobody asks about goose and geese or foot and feet. We just cal them irregular plurals. Let's start there.





';Goose'; has /u/ in the middle. Form that sound (forget letters). /u/ sits in the back of your mouth with your tongue high. Now make ';ee'; as in feet. That sits in the front of your mouth with your tongue high.





So, now you have the rule for forming the plural. Change the vowel from back to front.





But why ';oo'; and ';ee';? Well, a few hundred years ago, ';goose'; did not have an ';u'; sound, but rather two ';oh'; sounds. And the ';e'; wasn't the long e sound as we know it, but the ';e'; in ';bet'; or something close it. So you had ';go-ose'; and ';fe-et';. Two vowels together...hey...A LONG VOWEL. And now you know why we talk about long and short vowels. It's your history.





But what about ';mouse';? A few hundred years ago, the vowel sounds were not ';ah'; and ';u';. It was just ';u';. So, you said /mus/. And what's the front vowel? ';i'; or ';ee'; in modern English writing.





500 years ago, we had a vowel shift. ';u'; became ';au';. ';i'; became ';ai';. Hence, mouse and mice. But we had started writing the words. Pronunciation is more fluid than writing.





But wasn't ';house'; then /hus/? Yep, it was. What happened to the plural hice? I don't know if it existed. If it did, it got lost. And when things get lost, we go to the regular productive rule. ';S'; (or z sound) at the end? Add -es. Ergo ';houses';.





At some point, most of this made sense. But we language users keep making changes. And languages absorb other languages. We don't see that the way we see writing. The writing has not changed to reflect the changes.





And this, boys and girls, is what I studied in college.





EDIT!!!! Moose is not originally an English word. It's American, from Algonquin. So, it's a borrowing, and it happened after the great vowel shift. Borrowings get standard rules applied, so it's either ';mooses'; or just an unmarked ';moose';





EDIT 2: Native ability to use forms does not constitute ability to describe and explain.





EDIT 3: Remember Mr. Jinx the Cat? ';I hate meeces to pieces!'; Jinxy was making a historical form into a double plural, mees + es.If the plural of mouse is mice then why is the plural of house houses and not hice?
Lets face it, the way the English language works makes no sense. It has more idiosyncrasies than other languages. but feminine, male and neuter in other languages to me is nuts. Der Madchen, Das Madchen, Die Madchen, the girl, but there are like 12 ways to say the word ';the';
Same reason it is goose and geese but then moose and mooses.





Its language - not math or logic. There is no absolute formula for plurals or verb tense.
And if the plural of goose is geese why isn't the plural of moose meese. Its for the same reason.
Well it is if you are really posh. The Queen would say ';Do you live in a hice'; or ';I've gotta hice raoun taoun';
its the same as the I before E except after C rule. just because.
cuz its just the way it goes!!!