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Grammar
Course: Grammar > Unit 1
Lesson 4: Irregular plural nouns: base plurals and irregular endingsIrregular plural nouns: -en plurals
The plural of "whale" is "whales", but what's the plural of "child"? David, Khan Academy's resident grammarian, explains.
Want to join the conversation?
- in the future will you update the page since it only has the noun?(137 votes)
- Of course, Sunnyshen07! I'll be working on the Verb section for the next five weeks, so look for those tutorials to go up, too. Rest assured, though: there is much, much more to come!(233 votes)
- What is the origin of the word 'children'?(15 votes)
- One idea about the origin of both "children" and "brethren" is that long ago there were many ways to form plurals in English, including adding either -er or -en to the end of the singular noun. This is similar to how the German language works today.
So people in one region might add -er to form the plural, and say "childer"...
...while people in another region might hear someone say "childer" and assume it is singular, then add -en to form the plural and say "childeren" (which sounds a lot like "children").
Likewise, someone might add -en to "brother" to form the plural, "brotheren" (if you say this fast, it sounds a lot like "brethren").(30 votes)
- what if the word already has a s?(14 votes)
- Then you'd add
-es
, generally. So:
Singularbus
becomes pluralbuses
.(24 votes)
- What are the similarities between German and English grammar? Are there any?
Do the root-languages of English have to do anything with this -en rule? Was it the German language that had given us that whilst our language was still a little new? Or has it always been like that?(6 votes)- I'm less qualified to answer this question than, say, a linguist like my colleagues Jake or Natalie, but think of it like this:
German and English are cousins—a lot of what they have in common comes from a grandparent language called Germanic. It's less that German influenced English when English was new; it's more like German and English are about the same age, and grew up differently, but share a common lineage.(21 votes)
- What happen with men and women? are they not in this category? and why?(7 votes)
- Hey, Fabiola! Since the words 'men' and 'women' are already plural, they don't need to be changed. Their singular nouns are 'man' and 'woman.' Hope this helped :)
-C(3 votes)
- Do all our words come from different languages?(3 votes)
- No, some words have originated completely in English, but we also have many words borrowed from other languages.(5 votes)
- Does khanacademy have all the high school grammer including GCSE? Davids a good teacher.(3 votes)
- The Khan Academy grammar course, written by an American (David Rheinstrom) in America, and aimed at introducing the grammar of Standard American English, was not designed with the GCSE (a Commonwealth standard) in mind. If you are here to learn or "brush up on" the grammar of Standard American English (which isn't all that different, if it differs at all, from British standards), then this course will serve you well. BUT, if your specific aim is a particular exam, you might do better to find a course focused on the score.(4 votes)
- What is the origin of the word Kurzgesagt?(3 votes)
- It is German, it means "in a nutshell".(4 votes)
- I still don't understand what is an irregular plural(4 votes)
- Hey, amhaque! As David talks about, an irregular plural is a way of mentioning a plural that isn't the standard -s form.
-es [bus --> buses]
-en [child --> children]
-ves [loaf --> loaves]
are just a few examples of irregular plurals. The only difference is that irregular plurals are all of the pluralization that isn't just the normal way of doing it [adding an -s [dog--> dogs]]. Hope this helped :)
-C(1 vote)
- Is David Rheinstorm in the videos or is it David Alexander?
P.S. Sorry if I miss spelled something.(3 votes)- David Rheinstrom made all the videos in this course between 2014 and 2016. Alexander is just another guy with the same great first name. He doesn't work for Khan Academy.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians. Today we're going to be
discussing more irregular plurals. So, this is the irregular
plural part II, the two-ening. Because we really want to
focus on this en particle. I'll explain in a minute. So, previously we discussed
the idea that there's one regular plural. And then, there are a
couple of different kinds of irregular plurals. So, we have the word dog. Then it becomes dogs. We have the word leaf. Then it becomes leaves. I'd like to introduce something
else too, the word child is also an irregular plural
because its plural form is not childs, but in fact, you ready, say it with me, children. Wow. That's weird. What is that about? Like I said, English is
not a predictable language. Few languages are. When we think of English
as one solid block of wood, what we're actually seeing
is this lashed together raft made of spit, hope, and history. So, it's your job as a writer
and a speaker of English to make of this crooked
timber something straight, to borrow a phrase and then mangle it. So, the question is what is the deal? Right. And the answer is that it has
to do with English language history and heritage. English comes to us from Old English, which, if you look at it now,
it kinda looks like German because English is a Germanic language. That's the term linguists use. So, in Old English, there
were a bunch of different ways to make something plural. Some nouns would become
plural by adding an e n. Some you could add an s. Some you would add an r. And part of this depended on
what part of England you lived in at the time. There were a bunch of
different regional variations. Today, this e n ending only
applies to basically three or four words. These are all you need to
remember for this one weird e n thing. So, the e n ending plural only applies to child, ox, brother, or sister. And even those, these are really rare. I bet you don't even know
what I'm talking about. The plural of brother
originally was brethren. The plural of sister
is sistren, or sistren. But these are so rare, and
brothers and sisters is so common that we don't
even need to consider them. So, really, the only weird e
n plurals that are gonna be in common usage are children, and oxen. And unless your family
raises musk oxen or you're an ox driver, you're probably
not gonna be using the word ox very often, and if oxen
are a big part of your life, you probably knew how to
pluralize them already just from hearing people
talk about them your entire childhood. So, I'm going to cross that off too. The only thing you need
to worry about is the e n in children. Child becomes children. Now, you're probably wondering
David if there's the word ox, and ox becomes oxen. What about box? Why is the plural of
box boxes and not boxen? To borrow a gag from Brian Regan. The simple truth is that it has to do with this word's origin. Ox is a native Old English word. Box comes to us originally
from Greek, and then Latin. And then French. That's how it came to English. I'm sorry if that's not a very
satisfying answer, but that's how English works. English is this language
that is composed of a bunch of different puzzle pieces
all mashed together by time, history, and repeated invasions,
which are totally metal. But I'm getting away from myself. The important thing to
remember is that for this irregular plural, this e n
ending, really, unless you work with oxen, or unless you are
leading some sort of old-timey folk revival where you
have to refer to brethren and sistren, child to
children is really the only change you need concern yourself with. All this can be summed up just like that. You can learn anything. David out. Now, if you're still with
me, I would like to relate a humorous, historical
anecdote that comes to us from the 15th century English
printer William Caxton. Now, this story comes to us
from about the year 1490. And I just want to use this
story to illustrate just how different, how dependent
on what part of the country you were living in was on
the language that you spoke. Because before mass transit,
and mass communication media, which William Caxton
was a part of because he was one of the first English
language printers. Before any of this technology
allowed us all to communicate with each other, we basically
just had letters, and most people were illiterate. And talking to each other. And since it wasn't really
easy to get from place to place to place before the advent
of cars most people didn't really go very far. So, here is the story, which
I will translate for you from Middle English. It goes like this. So, these merchants were
traveling from the Thames river, which flows through London,
and they're trying to get to Zeeland, here, which is in
the modern day Netherlands. This is, incidentally, this is England. This is the southern
southeast coast of England. They're trying to get to
Zeeland, and this is a distance of about 160 miles. Give or take. But they can't make it
there because of bad winds. They stop here at Foreland
to refresh their stores. They stop for groceries basically. And then, they realize that
their London English and the English of the place where they are, which is maybe 60 miles
out of London, maybe, is mutually incomprehensible. A man goes into a house. Asks the woman of the house for eggs. She doesn't understand the
word eggs because the word she uses for eggs is eyren. The word egg is Norse. And he says I would like some egges. And she says I don't have any egges. I don't speak French. And he gets angry because
he's like I don't speak French either. I'm English. He says do you have any eggs. She says I don't know what that is. And finally, someone says
I think he means eyren. Do you have any eyren? And she said oh eyren. Of course, here. Buy some. And it just goes to show
you that before the advent of mass communication, we
could have had variations from, as Caxton put it,
shire to shire to shire. Each little town had its own
variant of language, and it wasn't until everything was
united by this technology that Caxton worked with, the
printing press, that people started to become literate
and converge toward what we would consider a more
unified standard of English. Alright. That was just a little bonus, silly video. You can learn anything. David out.