Good morning my dear students from all over the world!

How are you all doing today?

This is another grammar post! In this post, we are going to learn about plural nouns. I’m going to show you the most common rules of plural nouns as well as irregular cases of words in the plural form.

If you have subscribed to my YouTube channel, you know that I’ve been posting videos for beginners where I teach them basic grammar and vocabulary points to help them learn. You can find this subject (plural nouns) in my beginner’s guide playlist. At the end of this post, I will leave the link to the video lesson where you can learn more about plural in English.

But here we go!

In English, there are many kinds of words. Here in the blog, I’ve already shown you nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Today, we will focus on nouns again. Do you remember what a noun is?

A noun is a word that can describe a place, a person or a thing. This word can be used in the singular form or in the plural form. When we use these words in the plural form, we need to change the way we write and speak them. That’s what I’m going to show you today.  Let’s see some examples of nouns in the singular form:

A house

A car

A doctor

Remember! When you talk about a noun in the singular form you will need the articles a/an or the, ok?

Now, if you want to write or speak these words in the plural, look at the changes:

2 houses

3 cars

2 doctors

 

The first thing you need to know about words in the plural is that you NEVER use the articles A or AN. Never, ok? You can use “the”, but not “A/An”

In the examples above, I added the letter “s” to the words, to describe them in the plural. This is the first group of rules. We generally add the letter “s” to the nouns.

 

Group 1: Add “S”

A house – 2 houses

A pen – 3 pens

 

There are more groups. Let’s see another group of words:

 

A box – 2 boxes

A dress – 2 dresses

A watch – 2 watches

A Dish –  3 dishes

In this case, we need to add “ES” to the nouns that end in X, S, SS, CH, SH, Z and occasionally O.  This means that if your noun, your word ends this way, you need to include “es” to turn it into its plural form.

 

Let’s move on to another group of words

A city – 2 cities

A family: 2 families

We have a different case here. For this group of words,  we need to add IES and drop (eliminate) the Y (no more Y) to the nouns that end in Consonant + Y. Wait, what?

Don’t worry, let me explain. If your noun ends in Y and BEFORE the Y there is a consonant, you will need to say bye-bye to the “y” and add “IES”. Why is this information important? Look at a different example:

A toy – two toyS

A boy – 2 boyS

Hey! Look at that! The words above end in “Y” but I only added “s”.  If you look at the “letter” before the “Y” you will see that it is a “vowel”.  In this case, the word continues the same and you only add “s”

 

Time for another group!

A thief – two thieves

A knife – two knives

For these words, we need to add “VES”  to the nouns that end in “F” or “FE”

I know, so many rules, right? Don’t be upset. It takes time to learn and memorize and if you make mistakes it is really ok. This will not stop you from communicating, ok? Try to study these rules slowly and I’m sure you will make progress. Now let’s take a look at the irregular cases. What’s that?

 

Irregular plural forms

They have no explanation or pattern.  They are different, sometimes completely different. Look at some examples:

A man – two men

A woman – four women

A Child –  10 children

1 foot – 2 feet

 

In this case, there is no explanation or specific endings. They are irregular cases.

This post is to help you get started. There are more plural rules, ok? But these are some basic rules to help you get started.

Now, how about an exercise? Write the plural form of the words below:

A person:

A city:

A boy:

A girl:

A Wife:

A sandwich:

A fish:

A child:

A fox:

A watch:

If you want to watch this video lesson, check it out:

Do you have any questions? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks!

Teacher Prix