ABSTRACT
To form the plural of substantives, adjectives, and pronouns, Zamenhof took the letter -j, pronounced like E y, and thus created the often criticized forms chiuj tiuj bravaj homaj agoj, 'all those brave human acts,' etc., in the accusative chiujn tiujn bravajn homajn agojn. The device is not taken from any living language, though it has a kind of prototype in ancient Greek. If we want to go to living languages to find a plural ending, we may leave aside -r, which is used to some extent in Sc, -e, which is found in D Sc, -en or -n, which is pretty frequent in D and Dutch (though in the latter language generally mute); and the choice thus is restricted to -i and -s. The ending -i is frequent in I R, whence it is known in E in a few loan-words: bandiUi, bolsheviki. This ending was selected in Ido (with omission of the substantival ending of the singular, thus homi from homo man), the reason being twofold: a vocalic ending was wanted in order to make the addition of the (Esp) accusative -n possible, and on the other hand the s-endings were used as in Esp for the verb. But anyone whose choice is not determined by these two reasons is sure to prefer the ending -s, as it is much more international, being the regular mark of the plural in such important languages as ESP (F spelling), besides being used in an increasing number of words in D (kerls, autos, jungens) and Dutch.
