rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) (06/17/85)
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