Episode 165: Glamorous Grammar
The History of English Podcast
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The S Suffix in English Nouns and Verbs in Third Person Singular
Many of those old English inflectional endings had disappeared by the Elizabethan period. But a few still survived, like the S or ES suffix at the end of plural nouns and at theend of verbs in third person singular. Those suffixes had once been pronounced as distinct syllables. So, leaves would have been leavis, and sings would have been singes. The phonetic spellings of this period confirmed that.
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