• antonim@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Oxen is historically a 100% English plural, just like child-children, it wasn’t loaned. (I should check, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same -en as in German plurals: das Auge, die Augen.)

    Some of these Latin plurals can survive for technical terminology. But it’s pretty much only Latin ones, due to the historical prestige. Nobody talks of Soviet apparatchiki, it’s apparatchiks.