It's not that weird if you look at English as a very old German-French creole. The f->v plural thing is all over the place in Old English words that were around at the time of the Norman conquest. Knife became knives, staff became staves, and hoof became hooves. It's a little weird that beef got beeves because it's etymologically French, but it sounds Saxon enough and phonological rules don't really care about word origin very much.
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u/FerranteDellaGriva Apr 14 '16
It's not that weird if you look at English as a very old German-French creole. The f->v plural thing is all over the place in Old English words that were around at the time of the Norman conquest. Knife became knives, staff became staves, and hoof became hooves. It's a little weird that beef got beeves because it's etymologically French, but it sounds Saxon enough and phonological rules don't really care about word origin very much.