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My first reaction to aircrafts was to think it was a typo, but I just checked usage on NGrams...

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...and compared it to usage for the singular / collective noun form aircraft...

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...which seems to indicate that the "regular" plural form is gradually being taken up. Does this represent a tendency for English speakers to enforce regularity on the language? Are there any other examples? I'm not expecting to find that "sheeps", for example, is displacing "sheep" for the plural meaning, but maybe there are other "less established" usages that could be changing.

EDIT Please note that I'm not asking whether "aircrafts" is correct, or common. I'm asking if there's any reason why it seems to be occurring more often over recent decades (even though it's still pretty rare). And whether this effect occurs with other nouns having "non-standard" plural forms.

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I've never heard aircrafts from native speakers. – mgb Oct 31 '11 at 19:05
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My experience is English speakers from the Indian subcontinent rarely use collective nouns as plurals and tend to create 'standardized' plurals. – Affe Oct 31 '11 at 20:22
@Affe: I have to say that so far your comment seems to be the only contribution here that actually addresses my question. I don't know how we could establish the truth of what you say, but if it were so it might easily be enough to explain the phenomenon I seem to be looking at in NGrams. – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '11 at 21:47
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There's probably a linguist somewhere who's actually studied it :) All I can offer is the anecdotal testimony of an engineer who's been tasked with american-izing documents delivered by outsourced technical teams many times over the course of his career. – Affe Oct 31 '11 at 21:52
The question should be revised as it's been misinterpreted by nearly all... sorry to add to the clutter. – Iterator Oct 31 '11 at 23:03
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7 Answers

up vote 14 down vote accepted

Well, this is an example of why Google NGrams isn't a precise indicator. When we compare the two directly, aircrafts simply can't get off the ground:

aircraft vs. aircrafts

Now, this result is also flawed since it is impossible to separate uses of aircraft (singular) and aircraft (plural). It is also impossible to factor out typos (aircrafts vs. aircraft's) and so on.

The point is, don't read too much into what an NGram shows (or at least take the graphs with a grain of salt), because a great deal of the time what you wind up with is this sort of thing:

apples vs. oranges

(BTW, the huge spike in the use of aircraft in the early '40s is almost certainly due to the air war in Europe and the Pacific.)

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+1 for mentioning the European and Pacific air wars — the same thought came immediately to my mind. – msanford Oct 31 '11 at 21:33
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Per my comment to @drɱ65's answer, I know perfectly well that aircrafts is relatively uncommon. I'm only concerned with the apparent trend for aircrafts to occur more often in recent decades. I don't see how aircrafts vs. aircraft's makes any difference to that unless you attribute it to such typos becoming more common in later printing - which may indeed be the case, but I've no reason to think it so. – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '11 at 21:43
@Fum: Well, if it's a trend you see, it's one that isn't likely to overtake the other in the next millennium or two. – Robusto Nov 1 '11 at 0:15
up vote 12 down vote

Graphing some aircraft against some aircrafts shows that the latter is still quite uncommon compared to the former:

I would say that such as it is, it represents a tendency for non-native English speakers to emulate regularity when they do not know that the plural is irregular.

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and similarly with two aircraft – Henry Oct 31 '11 at 19:42
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The reason I graphed aircrafts/aircraft separately in my question was because the former would have simply "flatlined" otherwise. But looked at in isolation, aircrafts does seem to be on the increase. @Affe's comment on the question may well be significant; perhaps increasing numbers of Indian usages are skewing things to their own inclinations. – FumbleFingers Oct 31 '11 at 21:37
Did you click through to some of the aircrafts to check their source? – Hugo Nov 1 '11 at 6:54
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I think my answer does address the question. There is an increasing amount of written non-native English, and non-native English includes nontraditional attempts toward regular plurals. So we would expect to see an increasing amount of plurals like aircrafts. – Daniel δ Nov 1 '11 at 15:21
up vote 2 down vote

Maybe a word from a foreigner here would be appreciated!

Honestly, if I wanted to make aircraft plural, I would have said aircrafts. The reason is that unless I come across a situation where I actually have to use the word and someone tells me adding s is wrong, I have no way to find out!

I remember learning about fish and sheep when I was learning English. yen when I was in Japan. software from MS word that kept telling me softwares is wrong. You know, with software, even though I know softwares is wrong, I just can't get myself to use software. It just doesn't feel right to say I have written many software!

I think the reason English is subject to more rapid change (towards regularity) (in comparison with other languages) is that we all have to learn English and we all have different mother-tongues. Naturally, I use English the way I use my language unless told otherwise. (You won't believe how many times I literally translated a common phrase in Persian, only to see my friends shocked by how meaningless that phrase sounded)

And besides not knowing, there may be difficulties also. For example, in my language (Persian), you don't have irregular pluralization. So, by default, I tend to add s to whatever I want to make plural. (Not to mention we don't have genders (not even he/she), nor do we have declination, nor irregular conjugation. Image then one of us learning Polish!)

Now, my language is at least in the same family as English (Indo-European languages). Think of how messed up an Arab or a Vietnamese would be.

Anyway, that was my point of way. And yes, I'm quite certain English will be subject to many many changes, hopefully towards more regularity, simply because of non-native speakers. (Believe me, I've never seen any European NOT saying fishes!)

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The reason I have written many software doesn't sound right is because it's wrong. "Software" is a mass-noun which doesn't have a plural, and can't be used with the indefinite article "a". You write applications, packages, or systems, not softwares. – FumbleFingers Nov 1 '11 at 4:31
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Yes, but it's quite common to use the term software when referring to a piece of software, and that is why you tend to use it as a countable noun. You hear people say: "I bought this software, it's awesome", "Download that software and your problems are solved" or "I need to get another software to solve my problem". That's what I meant to tell you, since a lot of people use software like that, eventually softwares is going to enter English and become common. – Shahbaz Nov 1 '11 at 4:37
"I have no way to find out!" Spellcheckers? Dictionaries? – Hugo Nov 1 '11 at 7:00
@Shahbaz: I haven't heard "softwares" or "a software" among native English speakers. (It may be that it is used by native speakers of Indian English, I don't know). – Colin Fine Nov 1 '11 at 11:46
@Hugo, when you write, yes spell checkers tell you. When you speak they don't. And with dictionaries, you have to be looking for the word to know. If it sounds so natural to someone to say "fishes", why would they bother check with dictionary? If they do, they have to check for every single noun they know! – Shahbaz Nov 1 '11 at 13:32
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up vote 2 down vote

I don't know much about language, but I live to analyze data.

The frequency of "aircrafts" is increasing, relative to "aircraft", and is shown by using a divide symbol within the query.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=aircrafts%2Faircraft&year_start=1920&year_end=2012&corpus=15&smoothing=0

When I hear "aircrafts", I think "artwork constructed of air" or "artwork placed in the sky".

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Hi @B1n, welcome to ELU. I didn't know about using the divide symbol within the query, so have an upvote because you've already taught me something! I don't share your "aircrafts" = "artwork" perception though. The important point is that you've clearly shown the frequency of "aircrafts" is increasing, relative to "aircraft", which to me demolishes Lynn's claim that "as use of a word rises, so does misuse of a word" is relevant here. – FumbleFingers Dec 19 '12 at 2:07
Thank you. If you try "sheeps" against "sheep" the trend has an interesting period. Actually, strike that claim, because without smoothing, the results are less indicative of a trend. – B1n Dec 19 '12 at 2:20
Another interesting comparison is "audiences" against "audience". Both forms are spelled correctly, but the frequency of "audiences" is increasing. I would have thought "audiences" was a rare word, and as more words are written, it would fall in its occurrence rate. – B1n Dec 19 '12 at 2:38
That one doesn't seem unexpected to me. We have more different types of audience today (tv, movies, etc.) so it's more likely people will have reason to refer to them in the plural. A century or two ago, you'd probably only hear it in things like "I am an important man! I've had three audiences with the Pope!". But today it's quite normal to say things like "The BBC and ITV cater for different audiences". – FumbleFingers Dec 19 '12 at 2:45
I agree. Try "spelt" against "spelled" between 1950 and 2008. I think this provides some correlation with your original question. – B1n Dec 19 '12 at 2:50
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up vote 1 down vote

The industry always uses aircraft as both plural and singular.

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This doesn't answer the question. – Hugo Nov 1 '11 at 6:56
up vote 1 down vote

I don't think there's any way to answer this question definitively. All we're doing is speculating. So I'll offer a few speculative theories:

As use of a word rises, so does misuse of a word.

Aircraft saw an increase in usage between 1970 and 1990... and so did aircrafts. Aircraft then trended downward after 1990 and so did aircrafts. Softwares is also on an up-trend, mirroring the trend of software. Interestingly: Sheep saw an uptick in usage around 1910, and so did sheeps. Who knew?

Edit to clarify: In other words: If we speculate that X% of people mis-use aircrafts, as aircraft becomes more widely used, so will aircrafts. @FumbleFingers has pointed out that the use of aircrafts has increased more than use of aircraft. That may be so, but I don't think it invalidates this theory as a contributor to the overall uptick in use of aircrafts.

More writing = More mistakes

The sheer body of work increased dramatically in recent years - 3 billion ngrams in 1970 versus 13 billion in 2000. With writing becoming more accessible to a wider audience, it stands to reason there would be more potential for incorrect word use.

Edit to clarify: Again, simply: If aircraft appears a million times more often, that's a million more chances for typos, mistaken word choice, or things slipping through a proofreader.

English Takes a Beating

Sites like this non-withstanding, I think there's been a pretty clear trend (in the US anyway) away from proper grammar and spelling. As education takes a nosedive, one would expect word misuse to increase. Some folks in other answers have blamed non-native speakers, and maybe that's a part of it, but I think the native speakers are as bad as anyone in this regard :)

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My NGram has nearly 291,000 written instances of aircraft. I don't see how that's small enough to say the sample size skews anything. More writing = more mistakes, sure - but the only relevant change is the higher percentage of mistakes. I assume you mean wider access to publishing facilities means either incompetent writers can now use them, or proofreaders can't keep up with the increased workload. In my experience people who can't write, don't. Not in print, anyways! :) – FumbleFingers Nov 2 '11 at 1:55
I was referring to the sample size of aircrafts. The jump looks bigger because there are so few instances of it to start with. – Lynn Nov 2 '11 at 2:37
Oops my mistake - I meant 291,000 for aircrafts. Which is small compared to the 57M for aircraft, but big enough for the graph not to be skewed by anomalies arising from a small sample size. But after the leap in the 40s (caused by WW2, no doubt), aircraft has remained static for several decades, whereas aircrafts has easily doubled in frequency over the same period. – FumbleFingers Nov 2 '11 at 4:04
You're right, 291k is non-trivial. All meant was that there's a little 'hump' of increased usage in the ngram graphs for both aircraft and aircrafts between 1970 and 1990. The hump on aircrafts looks really dramatic, but the scale on the graph is actually quite small. In that time period, aircraft jumped in use by .001% (in the overall corpus) whereas aircrafts jumped in use by only .000001%. My assertion was that the use of aircrafts increased only a small amount compared to the overall increase in use of the standard form. But perhaps I'm misinterpreting the data. – Lynn Nov 2 '11 at 5:13
Well I'm only really taking issue with the way you reference the data to support your conclusions, not the conclusions themselves. Which seem to be (a) illiteracy is on the increase, and (b) more non-native speakers now write in English. I don't know how to count the number of instances for any specific period of time, because NGrams invariably gives hopelessly misleading values when it says about nnnn results, and I'm not going to page through the whole lot until it finally admits there are actually far less than it originally estimated! – FumbleFingers Nov 2 '11 at 13:51
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up vote -1 down vote

I am going to assign blame for this frustrating and persistent error to Microsoft, specifically their spell check function.

It first came to my attention in the 90's that a new version of MS Word (trademark) permitted the unfortunate addition of an "S" and didn't highlight it as an error. It has never been corrected. As many people rely heavily on the spell checker (myself included) there is no reason for them to know they are making an error. It has even been used on the Cathay Airlines Cargo website!

I hope that someday the spell check will itself be checked, but until then, I'll just groan and pull out my hair every time I see it.

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