A brief history of plural word...s - John McWhorter

Translator: Ariella Shan Reviewer: Hafizh Alfarisi

There are a lot of ways

Ada berbagai alasan mengapa bahasa Inggris sering tak masuk akal.

this marvelous language of ours,

English, doesn't make sense.

Umumnya, saat menyebut kata benda dengan jumlah lebih dari satu

For example, most of the time

when we talk about more than one of something,

kita akan menambahkan akhiran S, seperti “one cat, two cats”.

we put an S on the end.

One cat, two cats.

But then, there's that handful of words

Namun, untuk beberapa kata, bentuk jamaknya akan berbeda.

where things work differently.

Alone you have a man;

Misal “man” yang berjumlah dua disebut “men”.

if he has company, then you've got men,

Dua wanita juga disebut “women”.

or probably better for him, women too.

Although if there were only one of them,

Meskipun jika hanya ada satu wanita, jadinya tinggal “woman”.

it would be a woman.

Or if there's more than one goose,

Lebih dari satu “goose” disebut “geese”.

they're geese,

Lalu, kenapa jamaknya “moose”, bukan “meese”?

but why not lots of mooses, meese?

Or if you have two feet,

Jika dua kaki adalah “feet”,

then why don't you read two beek

kenapa dua buku tak jadi “beek” dan malah “books”?

instead of books.

The fact is that if you were speaking English

Kalau kau penutur bahasa Inggris yang hidup seribu tahun silam,

before about a thousand years ago,

beek is exactly what you would have said

“beek” adalah kata yang tepat untuk menyatakan lebih dari satu buku.

for more than one book.

If Modern English is strange,

Bahasa Inggris Modern memang aneh.

Old English needed therapy.

Versi kunonya justru lebih memusingkan.

Believe it or not,

Percaya atau tidak, bahasa Inggris dulunya lebih sulit dipahami.

English used to be an even harder language

to learn than it is today.

Sekitar 2.500 tahun yang lalu, bahasa ini serumpun dengan bahasa Jerman.

Twenty-five hundred years ago,

English and German were the same language.

They drifted apart slowly,

Keduanya pun perlahan terpisah, sedikit demi sedikit semakin berbeda.

little by little becoming more and more different.

That meant that in early English,

Artinya, dalam Inggris Kuno, seperti bahasa Jerman,

just like in German,

inanimate objects had gender.

benda mati juga memiliki gender.

A fork, gafol, was a woman;

“Gafol”, alias garpu, termasuk feminin.

“Laefel”, alias sendok, termasuk maskulin.

a spoon, laefel, was a man;

and the table they were on, bord,

“Bord”, alias meja, tidak memiliki gender atau disebut neuter.

was neither, also called neuter.

Go figure!

Bukan main!

Being able to use words

Menguasai bahasa ini tak cuma berarti memahami makna kata, tapi juga gendernya.

meant not just knowing their meaning

but what gender they were, too.

And while today there are only about a dozen plurals

Meski kini hanya tersisa segelintir bentuk jamak yang aneh-aneh,

that don't make sense,

seperti “men” dan “geese”,

like men

and geese,

in Old English, it was perfectly normal

dalam bahasa Inggris Kuno, bentuk seperti ini wajar-wajar saja.

for countless plurals to be like that.

You think it's odd that more than one goose is geese?

Apa menurutmu aneh jika banyak “goose” disebut “geese”?

Bayangkan jika dulunya banyak “goat” disebut “gat”

Well, imagine if more than one goat

was a bunch of gat,

or if more than one oak tree

dan banyak “oak tree” disebut “ack”.

was a field of ack.

To be able to talk about any of these,

Untuk menguasai perubahan semacam ini,

you just had to know the exact word for their plural

kau mesti mengingat kata jamak masing-masing benda,

rather than just adding the handy S on the end.

ketimbang menambahkan huruf S di belakang.

And it wasn't always an S at the end either.

Bahkan, tak melulu S yang ditambah di belakang.

In merry Old English,

Di bahasa Inggris Kuno, akhiran kata bisa ditambah huruf lain.

they could add other sounds to the end.

Seperti halnya “child” menjadi “children”,

Just like more than one child is children,

more than one lamb was lambru,

dulu, banyak “lamb” disebut “lambru”; “eggs” disebut “eggru”;

you fried up your eggru,

and people talked not about breads,

dan alih-alih “breads”, orang menyebutnya “breadru”.

but breadru.

Ada pula kata seperti “sheep” sekarang yang jamaknya tak perlu ditambah apa-apa.

Sometimes it was like sheep is today -

where, to make a plural, you don't do anything.

One sheep,

“One sheep”, “two sheep”.

two sheep.

In Old English, one house,

Di bahasa Inggris Kuno, ada “one house, two house”.

two house.

And just like today, we have oxen instead of oxes.

Sama seperti saat ini, kita memakai “oxen”, alih-alih “oxes”,

Old English people had toungen instead of tongues,

orang Inggris Kuno menyebut “toungen”, alih-alih “tongues”,

namen instead of names,

“namen”, alih-alih “names”.

and if things stayed the way they were,

Jika pola ini masih berlaku,

kita masih akan menyebut “eyen”, alih-alih “eyes”.

today we would have eyen instead of eyes.

So, why didn't things stay the way they were?

Kenapa bentuk-bentuk ini tak lagi berlaku?

In a word, Vikings.

Singkatnya, karena bangsa Viking.

In the 8th century, Scandinavian marauders

Pada abad ke-8, penyamun Skandinavia mengambil alih daerah Inggris.

started taking over much of England.

They didn't speak English,

Mereka tak bicara bahasa Inggris, melainkan Nordik.

they spoke Norse.

Plus, they were grown-ups,

Mereka juga sudah dewasa.

and grown-ups aren't as good

Orang dewasa sulit belajar bahasa baru, tak seperti anak kecil.

at learning languages as children.

After the age of roughly 15,

Setelah kira-kira umur 15 tahun, hampir mustahil menguasai bahasa baru

it's almost impossible to learn a new language

without an accent

tanpa membawa logat asli dan membuat kesalahan sekali-kali,

and without slipping up here and there

as we all know from what language classes are like.

seperti yang terjadi di kelas bahasa.

The Vikings were no different,

Bangsa Viking pun demikian.

so they had a way of smoothing away

Jadi, mereka menyederhanakan bagian bahasa Inggris yang sulit.

the harder parts of how English worked.

Part of that was those crazy plurals.

Sebagian di antaranya adalah bentuk jamak.

Imagine running up against a language

Bayangkan kau harus menghadapi bahasa yang punya bentuk jamak “eggru” dan “gat”

with eggru

and gat

on the one hand,

and then with other words,

sekaligus bentuk jamak yang cuma ditambahkan huruf S

all you have to do is add 's'

and get days

seperti “days” dan “stones”.

and stones.

Wouldn't it make things easier

Tidakkah lebih mudah bila menambahkan S saja?

to just use the 's' for everything?

That's how the Vikings felt too.

Itulah yang dipikirkan bangsa Viking.

Jumlah mereka banyak, lalu mereka menikahi wanita Inggris.

And there were so many of them,

and they married so many of the English women,

that pretty soon, if you grew up in England,

Tak lama kemudian, di Inggris saat itu,

you heard streamlined English as much as the real kind.

bentuk baru ini bercampur dengan bentuk aslinya.

After a while nobody remembered the real kind any more.

Lama-kelamaan, tak ada lagi yang mengingat jamak lama.

Tak ada yang ingat kalau dulu mereka mengatakan “doora”, alih-alih “doors”

Nobody remembered that once you said doora

instead of doors

and handa instead of hands.

dan “handa”, alih-alih “hands”.

Bentuk jamak kini lebih masuk akal,

Plurals made a lot more sense now,

except for a few hold-outs like children

kecuali untuk kata “children” dan “teeth”

and teeth

that get used so much

yang sangat sering digunakan hingga mendarah daging.

that it was hard to break the habit.

The lesson is

Intinya, bahasa Inggris saat ini lebih masuk akal dari yang kau kira.

that English makes a lot more sense than you think.

Semua berkat leluhur penduduk Copenhagen dan Oslo.

Thank the ancestors of people

in Copenhagen and Oslo for the fact

Karena mereka, kita tak lagi perlu memakai kata “pea-night”

that today we don't ask for a handful of pea-night

instead of peanuts.

yang kini disebut “peanuts”.

Although, wouldn't it be fun,

Meski begitu, boleh juga, sih, kita pakai kata ini sekali-kali.

if for just a week or two,

we could?