Woman vs. Women

While the difference between "woman" and "women" seems to mirror the "man" to "men" pluralization, there's more to it than that: if you listen hard enough, you'll realize that while the "a" changes to an "e," the phonological difference is located at the start. Why do we pronounce woman as "wu-mun" but pronounce women as "wi-min"? The answer lies in what I like to call "The Case of the Shifting Vowel." The pluralization of woman to women demonstrates a rare linguistic phenomenon known as i-mutation (or umlaut). In the plural form, the second syllable's "i" sound slowly influenced the "o" in the first syllable, pulling it forward in the mouth until it eventually became the "i" sound we are familiar with. While the pronunciation shifted to support easier differentiation between the two forms, the spelling remained the same to retain a level of symmetry between them -- at least visually.

Why does this matter? Well, from the perspective of a philosopher, this is a great example of the dichotomy between the conservative nature of English writing and the radical nature of speaking. This phenomenon also happens to be why we have "foot" and "feet" or "goose" and "geese." The internal vowel shift was how Old Germanic languages handled pluralization before Mr. English got lazy and decided to add an "-s" to the end of every singular noun (BOOOOOO)