Just to clarify, collective nouns are the names given to a group of items, like animals.
English has some great ones, like how a group of crows is a murder, or a group of owls is a parliament.
Most of the ones in Portuguese aren’t particularly inspired, but we do have an association (or a social group) of dolphins (*associação* or *grupo social)*, a suit of goats (*fato*), a *cáfila* of camels (from the arabic word for caravan), a cloud of grasshoppers (*nuvem*). My favourite though, comes from Brazil, and its a *panapaná* of butterflies (a word from the Tupi language).
What are some from your language? What are your favourites?
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a group of dolphins in German is called a *Schule* (school)
Greek doesn’t really do these. Land animals either come in packs (αγέλη), or flock (κοπάδι), flying animals come in swarms (σμήνος), and water animals are less talked about but as far as I can tell, we’d use the same word as land animals.
The distinction between what animals come in packs and which come in flocks may be interesting. The English translations are probably confusing – κοπάδι is not just for domesticated productive animals, but it seems to be more preferred for animals that graze even if they are wild animals.
A shoaling of fish is called a *banc*, which can also mean a bank or a bench.
In Dutch we have a school (school) for fish and a sprong (a jump) for rabbits. Those are the ones that stand out to me, others seem normal and similar to English.
Unfortunately I don’t really think Swedish has much to offer of what you’re looking for.
Sure there are some different words for groups of animals, like how fish would swim in a *”stim”* whereas for example wolves would come in a *”flock”*. But that’s their predominant meaning, so they’re not “fun” in that they’re primarily associated with something else entirely.
There really isn’t much in terms of unique terms either. *”Stim”* is rather unique as it’s limited to fish schools. *”Hjord”* is mostly limited to ungulates, but they can also be referred to with *”flock”* – which is used for all kinds of animals.
A favourite of mine is “A Black Sun of Starlings” – “En Svart Sol av Starar” – which is when there is a huge flock of many thousands of starlings so that the dark birds almost block out the sun in the sky. I think that sounds rather poetic.
Finnish doesn’t have much to offer in collective nouns. We only have a few specific animal ones like “katras” which means a flock of sheep and “pahnue” for a group of piglets. Most animals are covered with just two words: “lauma” for land animals and “parvi” for flying and sea creatures.
English has plenty of amusing ones IMO.
Tower of giraffes
Crash of rhinos
Float of Crocs
Armory of aardvarks
Kettle of vultures while soaring in the sky but changes to Wake when on land carcassing.
English while spoken widely has plenty of nuances and charms in it, making it a wonderfully easy, but challenging language to master.
A wheen in Scots, but it can be a number of anything.
In Britain since 2008 we have needed “a wunch of bankers”.