Sharing this video simply because it makes the word nerd in me chortle with glee:

[capri0mni]

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Readers' Digest version:

English has a lot of odd plurals; before the viking invasion, it had a lot more. But the vikings came over as grown-ups, had too much trouble keeping all the plurals straight, and so replaced most of the weird plurals with "Stick an 'S' on the end." They married the locals and simplified English became the language of Home, and stuck. The oddballs that remained, such as: Men, Women, and Children, did so because they were used so often that they were too hard to shake.

A few of the odd plurals that are no more:

One Book, Two Beek
One Lamb, Two Lambru (and Two Breadru, and Two Eggru)
One Goat, Two Gat (and Two Ack)

And, after all that, how can I not include this video?

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

TWO GAT is too wonderful to contemplate.

[capri0mni]

True. I also like the sentence:

I read three beek this week. :-)

[smw]

<3 Muppets.

I find the idea of Vikings having difficulty with English plurals very peculiar, must admit, though who am I to doubt? The thing is: Old Norse plurals have root vowel changes, too. Really, words that preserve those changes such as man/men might have more to do with similarity to the Old Norse than with repetition: frex, nominative singular maðr goes to nom. plural menn.

Then there are the words where you ask, "What are you doing, Old Norse? Why?" Example: saga to sǫgur, and the asshole adjective annar, which I'm going to provide the whole declension of because of all the pain I went through to recognize this particular word:
(N. = nominative, A. = accusative, G. = genitive, D. = dative, and I've stacked things such that singular/plural.)
Masculine:
N: annarr/aðrir
A: annan/aðra
G: annars/annarra
D: ǫðrum/ǫðrum

Feminine:
N.: ǫnnur/aðrar
A: aðra/aðrar
G: annarrar/annarra
D: annarri/ǫðrum

Neuter:
N.: annat/ǫnnur
A.: annat/ǫnnur
G.: annars/annarra
D.: ǫðrum/ǫðrum

Of course, if you go into the history all of those changes in sound make sense, and there are markers that help indicate gender/case, but knowing there's a reason for things doesn't make it easier to remember what's what.

[A side note: I'm wondering how consistent it is across languages that neuter nouns and adjectives take the same form in the nominative and accusative; Ancient Greek does the same.]

[capri0mni]

I remember declension of nouns from my years of high school Latin... But I keep forgetting the details, and thus have to remind myself what "accusative" is... (hooray for Wikipedia). I do remember, though, that Latin does the same with neuters.

(Speaking of giving gender to nouns, I think it can be enlightening re: a culture's assumptions of gender norms. I bet if you asked most modern Americans, for example, they'd guess that "fork" would be male, and "spoon" female...)

[smw]

I find it fun to read too much into the gender nouns take in a language, even though there's so much having to do with sound and chance rather than anything like deliberate choice or logical influence. F'rex: in Ancient Greek, the word for "young man" is neaniēs, which appears feminine through most of its declension but takes a masculine article*.

* Ancient Greek has gendered/declined articles; unlike the nouns, which prance around being irregular, the articles are consistent.

[capri0mni]

* Ancient Greek has gendered/declined articles; unlike the nouns, which prance around being irregular, the articles are consistent

*chuckle*