Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ptsfa.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!gymble!lll-crg!dual!ptsfa!rob
From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: English plurals in -en
Message-ID: <690@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Jun-85 23:14:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.690
Posted: Sun Jun 16 23:14:02 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Jun-85 01:42:13 EDT
References: <27400001@gypsy.UUCP> <546@hou2b.UUCP> <561@umd5.UUCP> <666@bbnccv.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco
Lines: 18
Keywords: VAXen

In article <666@bbnccv.UUCP> keesan@bbnccv.UUCP (Morris M. Keesan) writes:
>VAXen is probably more akin to "oxen" then "vixen", as far as derivation.
>The "en" suffix is a German pluralization, which has leaked over into English
>in words such as "oxen".

The plural '-en' in English is by no means borrowed from German.
[Languages VERY very rarely borrow affixes and grammatical features from
other languages.] Used to be that English had several different ways of
pluralizing nouns depending upon the class (i.e. declension) to which the
noun belonged. As noun declensions became simplified in English over
the past few centuries, the '[e]s' plural has been generalized to so many
nouns that other plural suffixes have come to be regarded as irregular.
-- 


Rob Bernardo, San Ramon, California
ihnp4!ptsfa!rob
{nsc,ucbvax,decwrl,amd,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!rob