The Weird Plurals in English英語中的古怪名詞復數

⊙ By Kory Stamper ⊙ 翻譯：Portia

Word Story 英語話廊

The Weird Plurals in English英語中的古怪名詞復數

⊙ By Kory Stamper ⊙ 翻譯：Portia

You may have seen the video in which I discussed the plurals of“octopus[章魚].” After itposted[發布],I got aslew[大量]of emails that said,“But this doesn’t explain all these other weird plurals.”

English is amongrel[混合物]of a language.It began life as a hard-nosedGermanic[日耳曼語的]dialect,wasoverrun[侵占]by French-speaking Normans,had a thing for Latin and Greek borrowings,collected whateverlinguistic[語言學的]crumbs[少許]fell out of itssea-faring[航海的]merchant[商人]class’s coats,picked up house,moved across a few oceans,eavesdropped[偷聽]on the natives,settled down and invited its poor European and eastern cousins to live with it,and then learned how to use a computer.You can’t expect a language that’s been that well-travelled to be regular.

Goose[鵝]and moose[駝鹿]are perfect examples of English’s “take what it can from wherever it can” history.Goose is a word that dates back about a thousand years to the old Englishgos,and in old English,the plural ofgoswasges.Both the singular and plural forms were taken into Middle English and are preserved in modern English as goose and geese.

Moose,on the other hand,is arelatively[相對地]recent addition to the language.It’s about 400 years old and is borrowed directly fromAlgonquian[阿爾貢金語],a North American native language that has noresemblance[相似之處]to old English.Why would we give moose the old English plural meese? Well,we wouldn’t,because,by the time moose came into English,we made plurals by adding an “s” or “es” to the ends of nouns.So,then,why is the plural of moose moose? Because,in English,we tend to use the singular form as the plural when talking aboutgame[獵物]animals like deer andelk[加拿大馬鹿].The final “s” in mooses got dropped,andvoila[瞧]! Two moose.

English is a dynamic,changing“critter[異常動物]” and,contrary to what some people may think,it always has been.Those irregular plurals are evidence of the richness of ourprofligate[揮霍、放蕩],weird language.

參考譯文

你們可能已經看過我解釋octopus一詞復數形式的視頻了。視頻發布后，我收到了許多電子郵件。人們在郵件中說：“但這視頻并不能說明其他古怪的名詞復數存在的原因啊?！?/p>

英語是一門混合語言。它一開始是頑強的日耳曼方言，后來慘遭操法語的諾曼人蹂躪，特別喜歡借鑒拉丁語和希臘語，然后又從出海遠航的商人那里收集各國語言的只言片語；接下來它收拾家當，數次飄洋過海，在偷聽了各地原著民的談話后，終于安定下來，并把歐洲和東邊的窮表親邀來一起過日子，最終還學會了怎么用電腦。對這樣一門曾經走南闖北的語言，你總不能指望它會按規則行事吧。

隨時隨地兼收并蓄是英語的歷史特色，而goose和moose正是反映這一特色的絕好例子。Goose一詞的歷史有大約一千年。在古英語中，它原為gos，復數是ges。Gos的單數和復數形式為中世紀英語所吸收，并在現代英語中以goose和geese的形式保存下來。

而moose呢，它是英語中相對較新的成員。它有約四百年的歷史，是直接從阿爾貢金語拿來的外來詞，而阿爾貢金語是一門北美的原著民語言，與古英語沒有任何相似之處。為什么要讓moose有古英語式的復數形式meese呢——呵呵，我們不會那么做，因為在moose一詞加入英語這個大家庭的時候，名詞單數變復數的方式已經變成了在名詞后面加s或es。既然這樣，那為什么moose的復數形式是moose呢？因為英語在談論獵物類動物（如deer和elk）時，往往會讓單數和復數保持一致，于是，mooses最后面的s被拿掉了——就這樣，moose的復數形式還是moose。

英語是一只生機勃勃、不斷變化的“怪物”，與許多人的想法相反，這本就是它的常態。那些不規則名詞復數正是英語既放蕩、古怪，又異常豐富多彩的例證。