english makes few changes to its word endings ('suffixes'). in the italic or 'romance' languages (such as french, italian, and spanish), word endings carry a lot of meaning. in english we have just a few: plurals and possessives ("john's") are the most common. in our verbs we have dropped most endings except one: i love, you love, but "she loves". that final 's' comes from the anglo-saxon, which had more suffixes. verbs do have endings which show changes in tense: walked, walking.