The -n plural in English
The most common way to form plurals in English is to tack an -s on the end: house, houses; cake, cakes; rat, rats. Old English had several ways to do this, and some of the plural forms survive only as fossils. Take, for instance, the class of nouns forming their plurals with a final -n. There are five remaining that I can think of.
Oxen is an obvious one. Shoon is long since out of fashion, but still recognizable. The other three didn't start out in the -n class, but shifted to it in Middle English from whatever class they were in.
The early plural of child was childer. Sometime in the Middle Ages, the English started adding an -en to that and came up with children -- a double plural, if you will. Old English broþor (brother) made its plural by umlaut: breþer. This became brethren -- another double plural. (Sistren is a word made up in modern times to try to match brethren in King Jamesy religious cant and never caught on. I will not dignify it with including it among my five examples. The plural of sister is sisters.)
Oxen, shoon, children, brethren. The fifth example is even less obvious: kine. The meaning of kine was always plural, but most people don't know its singular form. Old English cu formed its plural by umlaut: cy. In Southern (i.e., mainstream) dialects, this became cow (with plural cows). In Northumbrian dialect, this became kye, still used today for both singular and plural. In more standard English, kye attracted an -n to form a plural and became widespread for herd animals in the mass; thus kine became more or less equivalent to cattle (derived from French, "cattle" is cognate with "chattel," property, from a time when wealth was measured in land and livestock rather than money).
Can you think of any other -n plurals still in use in English?
Oxen is an obvious one. Shoon is long since out of fashion, but still recognizable. The other three didn't start out in the -n class, but shifted to it in Middle English from whatever class they were in.
The early plural of child was childer. Sometime in the Middle Ages, the English started adding an -en to that and came up with children -- a double plural, if you will. Old English broþor (brother) made its plural by umlaut: breþer. This became brethren -- another double plural. (Sistren is a word made up in modern times to try to match brethren in King Jamesy religious cant and never caught on. I will not dignify it with including it among my five examples. The plural of sister is sisters.)
Oxen, shoon, children, brethren. The fifth example is even less obvious: kine. The meaning of kine was always plural, but most people don't know its singular form. Old English cu formed its plural by umlaut: cy. In Southern (i.e., mainstream) dialects, this became cow (with plural cows). In Northumbrian dialect, this became kye, still used today for both singular and plural. In more standard English, kye attracted an -n to form a plural and became widespread for herd animals in the mass; thus kine became more or less equivalent to cattle (derived from French, "cattle" is cognate with "chattel," property, from a time when wealth was measured in land and livestock rather than money).
Can you think of any other -n plurals still in use in English?