Linguistic Wonders Series

Children and Other Small Things
John Robertson
Professor and Chair of Linguistics
Brigham Young University

You've probably noticed words like "child" and "ox" that have odd plural forms, like "children" and "oxen". Ever wonder how they got that way? Over the years, some words, the word for off-spring often among them, pick up two plural endings! What is remarkable is that this seems to be a universal linguistic tendency because it happens it other languages, too.

Let's start with English, where a plural ending was simply added to another plural (compare English "child" : "childer" with German Kind "child" : Kinder "children"). The tables below show plural forms at two different historical stages of the English language's development.

In other languages, this same tendency was treated slightly differently. Here, the original plural became a singular, which then received another plural ending to mark plurality:

Historically, people had many children. Where a plurality of creatures is the norm, the plural form tends to become singular, which requires new plurals to reflect the new norm.

At one time the words "childer" and "children" were competing to be the sole plural of child ("children" obviously won out over "childer"). In his 1528 translation of the Bible, Coversdale has both forms in Esther 9:28 "Dayes ... to be kepte of childers children [i.e. children's children]...." (The King James rendition is "...days should be ... kept throughout every generation....") This is a good example of a phenomenon where a new, innovating form (in this case "children") takes over an older form ("childer")—but, more on that another day.

Speaking of unusual plurals, if you want to know when oxes (and not oxen) really is an appropriate plural for "ox", click on here.