It can be tricky to guess the plural form of certain words. The quiz we prepared can be challenging even for native English speakers. Don’t believe us? You shouldn’t take our word for it. Get down to the questions instead! Before you do that, keep reading if you want to learn everything there is to know about plural forms in the English language.
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Nouns have two forms: singular and plural. Singular nouns mean one thing. In the sentence “Can I borrow your pen?”, “pen” has a singular form. There is only one pen in that situation. To make it plural, the sentence would be: “Can I borrow your pens?” Plural means there is more than one thing.
Countable nouns are the only ones to possess a plural forum. Uncountable nouns (for example “milk”, “flour”, and “water”) do not have a plural form.
The majority of singular nouns are easy to be made plural – you put an -s at the end. For example, cat – cats, pen – pens, orange – oranges, house – houses.
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Words and phrases ending in s, ss, sh, ch, x, or z become plural by incorporating the suffix -es at the end. For example, bus – buses, truss – trusses, box – boxes, church – churches, marsh – marshes.
If the noun ends with -f or -fe, replace -f or -fe with -v and add -es. If the noun ends with -ff, you just add -s, and nothing else changes. Plural nouns examples: cliff – cliffs, puff – puffs.
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Consonants are all the letters of the alphabet apart from the vowels: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z. If a singular noun’s final letter is y, alter the end to -ies to render the noun plural. For example, city – cities, puppy – puppies, baby – babies, lady – ladies.
What happens when the noun ends in -us? In that case, the plural ending is often -i. For example, cactus – cacti, focus – foci, fungus – fungi, nucleus – nuclei.
To make the singular noun ending in -on plural, you add -a at the end. Examples: phenomenon – phenomena, criterion – criteria.
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Some nouns don’t change and have the same singular and plural form. Some of these nouns are sheep, series, species, deer, fish, means, and ice. The plural of sheep is just sheep.
The fish is a bit of a special case, however. Generally, the plural form of fish will also be fish. Referring to fish as species, or to a Zodiac sign Pisces, you can use the form fishes as plural.
Irregular nouns don’t follow regular rules for forming plural forms. You should just try to learn them, and if you can’t, check the proper form in a dictionary or ask a teacher. The plural examples: foot – feet, goose – geese, man – men, woman – women, plural of child – children, tooth – teeth, mouse – mice, person – people, ox- oxen.
You can use this little guide we’ve written up to help you create plural forms. Unfortunately, you also have to practice. As you must’ve noticed, not all nouns follow standard rules, and there are many exceptions. What you need to do is to try and remember them and learn how to actually use them in real life. You can use the help of an English tutor.
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