Summary 1. The origin of plural words
Nowadays, when a native english talks, he says automatically a lot of words. In most cases he
doesn’t even know where those words come from and it’s the same thing for all the people around
the world that express themselves in any other language. But for the experts (and for all those who
are interested) know a language and have conversations in it, involves to be conscious about all the
linguistic processes that let the language be what it is now. One of those is ‘why in English plural
words end with –s’ and the answer is easier than it looks. We need to go back at 500 b.C. when
English looked like German in a lot of aspects, including the fact that they have their “grandfather”
in common, that is the Protogermanic language. In that moment people began to speak Old English
that used a lot of words borrowed from German, using the same plural form and division into
genres (masculine, feminine, neutral) too. So, the years and the centuries passed and the two
languages became more and more different while still preserving some similar words. The real
revolution about plurals began when England was invaded by Vikings around the 8th century. They
came from the North so they spoke Norse that was not so different from English, but they were
confused by all these strange plurals. So, norsemen began to marry english women, their cultures
mixed and, under their influence, english people began to put the –s at the end of plural words and
they didn’t mind a lot. There are still words that have the original Old and Middle English plural
forms, like men, women, feet, teeth, and so on but surely no one says doora instead of doors or
handa instead of hands anymore.
