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There are a lot of ways

this marvelous language of ours, |奇妙的||| Bu muhteşem dilimiz,

English, doesn't make sense. |||道理 İngilizce, hiç mantıklı değil. For example, most of the time Örneğin, çoğu zaman

when we talk about more than one of something, |||||||的| Bir şeyden birden fazla bahsettiğimizde,

we put an S on the end. ||||||末尾加S

One cat, two cats. |||猫咪们

But then, there's that handful of words ||||少数几个|| Ama sonra, o bir avuç kelime var where things work differently. 在……地方|||不同方式 İşlerin farklı yürüdüğü yerlerde.

Alone you have a man; Tek başına bir erkeğin var;

if he has company, then you've got men, |||同伴|||| Eğer onun arkadaşı varsa, senin de adamın var demektir, or probably better for him, women too. |可能||||女人们| ya da muhtemelen onun için daha iyisi, kadınlar da.

Although if there were only one of them, 虽然||||||| Gerçi onlardan sadece bir tane olsaydı,

it would be a woman.

Or if there's more than one goose, ||||||鹅如果有多只 they're geese, |它们是鹅。 but why not lots of mooses, meese? |||||但为什么不是很多驼鹿|驼鹿们 |||||moose|

Or if you have two feet, |||||两只脚

then why don't you read two beek ||||||那你为什么不读两本书 instead of books.

The fact is that if you were speaking English |||||||说英语| Gerçek şu ki, eğer İngilizce konuşuyor olsaydınız

before about a thousand years ago, |||大约一千年前||

beek is exactly what you would have said 正是你说||正是|||||

for more than one book.

If Modern English is strange,

Old English needed therapy. |||旧英语需要治疗。

Believe it or not,

English used to be an even harder language İngilizce eskiden daha da zor bir dildi

to learn than it is today.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, ||两千五百年以前||

English and German were the same language. ||德语||||

They drifted apart slowly, |渐行渐远|渐行渐远|慢慢地

little by little becoming more and more different. |||变得||||不同

That meant that in early English, |意味着||||

just like in German, |||德语中

inanimate objects had gender. 无生命的|||性别

A fork, gafol, was a woman; |叉子，gafol，女人。|叉子|||

a spoon, laefel, was a man; |勺子，男人|勺子，laefel|||

and the table they were on, bord, ||||||边缘

was neither, also called neuter. |既不|||中性 ikisi de değildi, nötr olarak da adlandırılır.

Go figure! |想想看

Being able to use words

meant not just knowing their meaning |||了解||含义

but what gender they were, too. ||性别|||

And while today there are only about a dozen plurals ||||||||十几个|复数形式

that don't make sense, |||有道理 like men

and geese, |和鹅 |geese

in Old English, it was perfectly normal |||||完全|

for countless plurals to be like that. |无数的||||| |many|||||

You think it's odd that more than one goose is geese? |||奇怪|||||||鹅 Well, imagine if more than one goat

was a bunch of gat, ||一堆枪||枪支

or if more than one oak tree

was a field of ack. ||领域||确认字段

To be able to talk about any of these,

you just had to know the exact word for their plural ||||||确切的||||复数形式

rather than just adding the handy S on the end. 而不是|||添加||方便的||||末尾

And it wasn't always an S at the end either. In merry Old English,

they could add other sounds to the end. ||||声音|||末尾

Just like more than one child is children, |||||||孩子们

more than one lamb was lambru, |||多只小羊||多只羊羔是跛的

you fried up your eggru, |煎蛋|||煎蛋

and people talked not about breads, ||谈论|||面包

but breadru. |但是面包兄弟。

Sometimes it was like sheep is today - ||||有时像羊||

where, to make a plural, you don't do anything. ||||复数形式|||| One sheep,

two sheep.

In Old English, one house, |||一所房子|

two house.

And just like today, we have oxen instead of oxes. ||||||牛|||公牛

Old English people had toungen instead of tongues, ||||舌头|||

namen instead of names, 名字|||名字

and if things stayed the way they were, |||保持||||

today we would have eyen instead of eyes. ||||眼睛|||

So, why didn't things stay the way they were? In a word, Vikings.

In the 8th century, Scandinavian marauders ||||斯堪的纳维亚|掠夺者

started taking over much of England.

They didn't speak English, they spoke Norse. ||北欧语言

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.

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?