vestiges of gender and case in English [View all]
Old English = Old German was highly inflected; Modern German less so; Modern English still less so. But some vestiges remain. Gender is evident in pairs of words like actor/actress, prince/princess, governor/governess.
Most plural nouns are distinguishable from the singular, and some are irregular (man/men, ox/oxen, mouse/mice). The rule for most plurals in English is to add an /S/ sound and to write " s " after the singular form.
The /S/ sound in English (usually written with an apostrophe) or German (without an apostrophe) can also indicate possession; this is a vestige of the genitive case.
Personal pronouns in Contemporary English are still inflected: I, my, mine, me, we, our, ours, us, etc. But we have lost the second-person singular forms, which survived into Early Modern English, e.g., thou, thy, thine, thee. We recognize these archaic forms in Shakespeare and the King James Bible. And let's not forget the line: "Hast thou slain the jabberwock?"
What will the future bring? Will the planetary language become even less inflected than it is now?
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