> The answer is that the -s plural is from the Vikings/Norse
Which is interesting, because modern Swedish has an -n plural (among other plurals) and no -s plural. Compare ögon (eyes) and öron (ears) with their old english eyen and earen. I guess it would follow that Swedish had a lot of Angle Saxon influence in its evolution.
It’s actually more that the Old Norse and Old English had different endings and the Vikings didn’t bother to figure out the English system. I don’t think they know whether the -s is from a Norse ending or whether the Norse settled on -s for other reasons.
The simplified version eventually spread because England was a mixture of various ethnicities for centuries and you’d have different variants of English from one town to the next— and after the Vikings you had the normans.
I think it’s the equivalent of the guy I was eating with at a restaurant in Nicaragua who yelled to the waitress ‘honey, el forko por favor?’ Like, there was an attempt at Spanish.
Which is interesting, because modern Swedish has an -n plural (among other plurals) and no -s plural. Compare ögon (eyes) and öron (ears) with their old english eyen and earen. I guess it would follow that Swedish had a lot of Angle Saxon influence in its evolution.