There are a lot of ways this marvelous language of ours, English, doesn't make sense. For example, most of the time when we talk about more than one of something, we put an S on the end. One cat, two cats. But then, there's that handful of words where things work differently. Alone you have a man; if he has company, then you've got men, or probably better for him, women too. Although if there were only one of them, it would be a woman. Or if there's more than one goose, they're geese, but why not lots of mooses, meese? Or if you have two feet, then why don't you read two beek instead of books. The fact is that if you were speaking English before about a thousand years ago, beek is exactly what you would have said for more than one book. If Modern English is strange, Old English needed therapy. Believe it or not, English used to be an even harder language to learn than it is today. Twenty-five hundred years ago, English and German were the same language. They drifted apart slowly, little by little becoming more and more different. That meant that in early English, just like in German, inanimate objects had gender. A fork, gafol, was a woman; a spoon, laefel, was a man; and the table they were on, bord, was neither, also called neuter. Go figure! Being able to use words meant not just knowing their meaning but what gender they were, too. And while today there are only about a dozen plurals that don't make sense, like men and geese, in Old English, it was perfectly normal for countless plurals to be like that. You think it's odd that more than one goose is geese? Well, imagine if more than one goat was a bunch of gat, or if more than one oak tree was a field of ack. To be able to talk about any of these, you just had to know the exact word for their plural rather than just adding the handy S on the end. And it wasn't always an S at the end either. In merry Old English, they could add other sounds to the end. Just like more than one child is children, more than one lamb was lambru, you fried up your eggru, and people talked not about breads, but breadru. Sometimes it was like sheep is today - where, to make a plural, you don't do anything. One sheep, two sheep. In Old English, one house, two house. And just like today, we have oxen instead of oxes. Old English people had toungen instead of tongues, namen instead of names, and if things stayed the way they were, today we would have eyen instead of eyes. So, why didn't things stay the way they were? In a word, Vikings. In the 8th century, Scandinavian marauders started taking over much of England. They didn't speak English, they spoke Norse. Plus, they were grown-ups, and grown-ups aren't as good at learning languages as children. After the age of roughly 15, it's almost impossible to learn a new language without an accent and without slipping up here and there as we all know from what language classes are like. The Vikings were no different, so they had a way of smoothing away the harder parts of how English worked. Part of that was those crazy plurals. Imagine running up against a language with eggru and gat on the one hand, and then with other words, all you have to do is add 's' and get days and stones. Wouldn't it make things easier to just use the 's' for everything? That's how the Vikings felt too. And there were so many of them, and they married so many of the English women, that pretty soon, if you grew up in England, you heard streamlined English as much as the real kind.
我们奇妙的语言, 英语, 有很多方面说不清。 比如,大多数时候 当我们讨论不只一个东西时, 单词要加后缀S。 一只猫是one cat, 两只猫就是two cats。 但是,还有一些单词 复数形式不同。 你一个人是a man; 如果你和别人一起,就是men, 或者更好一点,也有women。 如果只有一个女人, 那就是a woman。 或者如果有多于一只鹅 (one goose), 它们就是geese, 但为什么没有mooses,meese呢? 你有两只脚(two feet), 但是为什么你不会读two beek 而是two books(两本书)呢。 事实上,如果你是在 约一千年前讲英语, 你确实会这样说 书的复数就是beek。 如果觉得现代英语奇怪, 但古代英语就需要治疗了。 不管你信不信, 英语曾经是比现在 难的多的语言。 两千五百年前, 英语和德语是同一种语言。 它们逐渐疏远, 渐渐地越来越不同。 这意味着早期的英语, 就像德语一样, 客观事物都分性别。 一个叉子,gafol,是女性; 一个勺子,laefel,是男性; 而桌子,bord,不男不女, 也叫做neuter(中性)。 想象一下! 要使用这些词的话 不仅知道它们的意义 还能知道它们的性别。 现如今只有一些词的复数形式 比较特别, 像人(men) 鹅(geese), 在古代英语里,这完全正常 不可数名词的复数像这样。 你认为多于一只鹅(one goose) 叫geese很奇怪? 那么,想想如果不只一只山羊(one goat) 是一群gat, 或者不只一棵橡树(one oak tree) 是一片ack。 要探讨这些, 你需要知道这些单词确切的复数形式 而不是只加个方便的后缀S。 而且复数后缀也不只是S。 在丰富的古代英语里, 他们可以在后缀加其他。 就像儿童(child)的复数是children, 羔羊(lamb)的复数是lambru, 你煎你的eggru(鸡蛋), 人们不说breads, 而是breadru(面包)。 有时就像现在用的sheep(绵羊)—— 单复数形式一样。 一只羊(one sheep), 两只羊(two sheep)。 在古代英语里,one house(一栋房子), two house(两栋房子)。 就像现在,我们有oxen而不是oxes(公牛)。 古代英语里人们有toungen而不是tongues(舌头), namen而不是names(名字), 如果一切都保持原样, 我们现在就是有eyen而不是eyes(眼睛)。 那么,为什么我们不像古人那样说呢? 简言之,维京人。 在8世纪,斯堪的纳维亚的侵略者 开始占领英格兰大片领土。 他们不讲英语, 讲斯堪的维亚语(Norse)。 再加上,他们已经是成人, 成人不像儿童 那么擅长学习语言。 大约过了15岁后,, 几乎不可能学习一种新的语言 而没有口音 还完全不犯错 正如我们从语言课上所了解的一样。 维京人也一样, 于是他们找到一种办法 克服英语中较难的部分。 其中就有这些烦人的复数。 想象一下,突然遇到一种语言 有eggru, 有gat, 并且, 还有其他词的复数, 只需要加后缀“s” 就有days(天) stones(石头)。 那么对每个词的复数加“s” 岂不是变得容易很多? 维京人也这么觉得。 而且有那么多维京人, 他们又娶了那么多英国女人, 很快之后,如果你在英格兰长大, 你听到的改良式英语和纯正英语一样多。
After a while nobody remembered the real kind any more. Nobody remembered that once you said doora instead of doors and handa instead of hands. Plurals made a lot more sense now, except for a few hold-outs like children and teeth that get used so much that it was hard to break the habit. The lesson is that English makes a lot more sense than you think. Thank the ancestors of people in Copenhagen and Oslo for the fact that today we don't ask for a handful of pea-night instead of peanuts. Although, wouldn't it be fun, if for just a week or two, we could?
过段时间后没人记得纯正英语了。 没人记得你要说doora 而不是doors(门) 要说handa而不是hands(手)。 现在的复数形式比以前容易解释的多, 除了少部分词像children(儿童) teeth(牙齿) 人们已经习惯这样用 难以改变这些习惯用法。 这告诉我们 英语比你认为的更容易理解。 感谢人类的祖先 在哥本哈根和奥斯陆的祖先 如今我们不需要说pea-night 而是peanuts(花生)。 即便如此,难道不会很有趣吗, 哪怕只说一两周, 是吧?