What is the etymology of the S as a plural in languages like French and Spanish? Why does Italian use the.....

Question

vowels I and E for most of its' plurals and what is the origin of that? What specific influences contributed to the division regarding pluralization in these languages?

Answer 1

Vulgar Latin (as spoken by the common people) as opposed to Classical Latin adopted the accusative case of most nouns when the declension system was being eaten away. If you know any Latin, you'll recognise that the Nom Sing is often the odd man out - e.g. lux - but the other cases are words like lucem, lucis, luci, luces, etc.

Masc. plurals end in"os", Fem. plurals in "as", so the "s" ending became the norm in French and Spanish. Italian, perhaps being closer to the source of Latin, retained the Nom plurals ending in "i", "ae" (which became "e"). The neuter was assimilated into the Masc in all cases.

Answer 2

I would like to hear that myself. I don't think there is any single person or occasion which triggered it in the first place. It is just a custom that grow through the ages.
Other nations like Indonesia double the nouns, so instead of
house to houses, or book to books, they say: rumah for singular and rumah-rumah and buku to buku-buku.

While the Mandarin Chinese do not change anything, but indicate them by the number, for instance if they want to say "There is one book" = "You yi ben shu." 有一本书 And for "there are three books" , just > "you san ben shu". 有三本书