Episode 53: The End of Endings
The History of English Podcast
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The Origin of the Old English Inflection System
Old english had a much more complicated set of endings to express plurality. By the nine hundreds, we start to see evidence that this system was breaking down. In parts of the former dane law, those endings were starting to be confused. One particular ending was starting to emerge as the fault ending used for masculine nouns. And that os ending was the origin of our modern s ending.
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