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Comment by amaccuish | Hacker News Reader

This only goes so far back. I believe they actually came from German. Oxen in German is Ochsen German still actively uses the -en plural, and all nouns in the dative plural must use -n.

So, Ochsen -> Oxen, Maenner -> Men

(Slightly unrelated) So if you look at Scotland and Ireland, they've get some really interesting things in their dialects. die "Kirche" in German is a "church", in some dialects in scotland, it's a "kirker". Or in old dialects in Ireland, "children" is sometimes spoken as "childer".

EDIT: I retract my theory on the relationship between children and kindern :)

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Curiously, Kinder and children are completely unrelated. Child comes from the Proto-Germanic kelþaz which further came from the Proto-Indo-European stem gel-. On the other hand, "Kind" comes from Proto-Germanic kinþa, which comes from a Proto-Indo-European stem ǵenh₁- meaning "to produce, to give birth", whence also "genesis", "genealogy" and "gonad".

German definitely did not cause those curious plurals. We know for sure Old English had them itself from Proto-Germanic, and it makes a lot more sense for a language to retain irregular forms for words that are used very often, than to loan grammar, which is a relatively rare occurrence.

EDIT: How do you type asterisks here? Escaping with a backslash doesn't work, nor does using three in a row

For the uninitiated: That's highly speculative

for reference

cold https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

call, cry, (yell?) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/child from PIE g(')elt- (“womb”)

from Proto-Indo-European gel- (“to ball up, amass”). according to the PGmc page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...

but

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dolphin

says from δελφύς (delphús, “womb”), which says from

From Proto-Indo-European gʷelbʰ- (“womb”)

I'd offer German "Quälgeister" as modified reflex of the latter. Also "Quell" is synonym for off-spring. Well, spring is a direct translation of "Quelle", i.e. source. Coincidence? Cry fits in, too.

I do not believe the dolphin theory, though. I guess tail-fish is more likely. they have a penis after all, which is way funnier in general, perhaps to funny for low brow scribe type doctors. Ancient Greek δελφίς (delphís) lends itself for φίς (phís) > fish. cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fin IMHO

any questions?

> EDIT: How do you type asterisks here? Escaping with a backslash doesn't work, nor does using three in a row

You can't, if you want to use more than one in the same comment. A workaround is to use a similar glyph such as UNICODE SMALL ASTERISK ﹡.

I don't *know

No, those words are ancient, much older than any remotely modern German. They come from Proto-Germanic via Old English and have cognates in most Germanic languages. Kin words are usually among the most preserved and most rarely borrowed words in a language, as are words related to agriculture and animal husbandry.

Yes, very true, that's even further back, but you miss out on the fun stuff like vowel mutations and changing in endings :)

The article explains that "children" is a fancified form of "childer" which matches the German "Kinder". The dative has nothing to do with this.

I was referring to where the -n came from. After research it seems it came from the old case system, which originally came from german, not sure if it's the dative plural, was just a theory. Here's more about that:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-en#Etymology_2

Read the article; the -en in this particular case arose after the loss of the case system, in a hypercorrection during a period when -en and -s were the two main plural endings.

I did, I was speaking about -en vs -n. Why -en for children and not just -n. Have I missed something?

Plain -n isn't used anywhere in English that I know of for a plural; the consonant cluster childrn would be improbable.

It doesn't come from German; both English and German inherit it from Proto-Germanic.

Speakers of my Irish-border dialect do sometimes use "childer" instead of "children", you're correct. I suppose many remnants of old English (and equally other languages) are preserved in random local dialects.

I wouldn't be surprised if it went father back. Farsi, another Indo European language has the -en/an ending, for human nouns. Child/Bache -> children/bachegan, brother/boradar -> brethren/boradaran, Daughter/dokhtar -> dokhtaran. I'm not sure if they share the same derivations but seem related.

When I was growing up in rural Ireland in the 80s, it was quite common to hear childer used as the plural for child so it was interesting to read in the submitted article that this usage dates from Middle English. Some of my parents’ generation used this word but it was mostly spoken by my grandparents’ generation. Its usage seems to have mostly died out in the decades since then and I haven’t heard it spoken in years. On a related note, the word chisler was used by the older generations of Dubliners as colloquial term for child.

It doesn't really 'come from German', it's part of the common ancestry of Modern High German and English. Take a look at Cædmon's Hymn in Old English.

> all are caused my german.

It's not like German were "at fault". English grew out of a common ancestor with nowadays German.

Sorry, poor english :) and yes that's true, but that common ancestor, west germanic, is they key point here, as it shows us why things are in English.

Old High German is not the ancestor of English. Some kind of West Germanic might be called a common ancestor of both English and German.

My bad, sleepy! I have an exam on this soon so hopefully I'll be good by then :)

So, are German men also called "Germen"? xD

I see what you did there xD

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