About the only one of those I use (besides the regular ones like ‘a flock of birds’) is ‘a murder of crows’. Usually in a statement like “We just witnessed a murder.”
I think I generally operate on “it flies = flock”, “it swims = shoal”, and “it walks on land = herd”. There are exceptions, but that’s the broad approach
I would definitely recognise it and would not consider it weird if I heard someone say it, but I probably wouldn’t instinctively reach for it myself. That’s obviously just me though, not necessarily English speakers in general
Ah ok. I am not a native speaker, but would say I have a near native fluency in American English (moved here at 15 having already learned it before), and school of fish would be my go to, but shoal is the same as you said to me, sounds perfectly natural. Now that I am thinking about it though, it feels like every time I was near one (on a boat, or scuba diving), people said shoal, and in more abstract settings, school was more common. That’s probably just me inventing a pattern though
I love you, English as my second language, but you cray cray and I ain’t doing all of that.
Don’t worry, virtually no first-language English speakers do either
About the only one of those I use (besides the regular ones like ‘a flock of birds’) is ‘a murder of crows’. Usually in a statement like “We just witnessed a murder.”
I think I generally operate on “it flies = flock”, “it swims = shoal”, and “it walks on land = herd”. There are exceptions, but that’s the broad approach
Agreed, although I think a school of fish is also pretty broadly used, no?
I would definitely recognise it and would not consider it weird if I heard someone say it, but I probably wouldn’t instinctively reach for it myself. That’s obviously just me though, not necessarily English speakers in general
Ah ok. I am not a native speaker, but would say I have a near native fluency in American English (moved here at 15 having already learned it before), and school of fish would be my go to, but shoal is the same as you said to me, sounds perfectly natural. Now that I am thinking about it though, it feels like every time I was near one (on a boat, or scuba diving), people said shoal, and in more abstract settings, school was more common. That’s probably just me inventing a pattern though
Yeah all of these can be replaced with “group” with no loss in specificity.
Pretty much. There’s no need to learn all these terms. When in doubt, just call the animal group a group. No one is going to care otherwise.