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Irregular plural nouns: -f to -ves plurals

Not all English nouns can be made plural only by adding an "s" to the end. These are called irregular plurals. Many words that end in "f", like "leaf", "loaf", and "calf", change their sound when they become plural: "leaves", "loaves", and "calves".

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  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user ‮﷼ordnailreB namroN kcirtaP
    What is the different between Could, Would, Should?
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  • female robot grace style avatar for user Alisa Zhupanenko
    Is there a way to know when a word won't follow this rule? For example, a way to automatically know that belief will become beliefs?
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  • piceratops seed style avatar for user sun080327
    On the quiz words that ended with -ef generally just added an -S when made plural. Is this a rule or are their just some exceptions to the (-F) to (-ves) rule like chef turn to chefs when plural not cheves.
    (4 votes)
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    • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user David Rheinstrom
      I wouldn't say it's an ironclad rule; definitely there are plenty of exceptions to the -f to -ves convention. Cliffs, chefs, riffs.

      There's a more complicated linguistic explanation to why a final f sound changes to a v sound in the plural—I think it's sometimes related to the vowel sounds in the words—but a person can go their whole life speaking English without ever needing to bother with that.
      (21 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Killer Death
    Let me get this straight
    An irregular noun is a noun that becomes plural by changing its spelling in other ways than adding an “s” or “es” to the end of the word.
    (10 votes)
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    ⠀⠀⠀⠉⠛⠛⠿⠿⠶⠶⠶⠶⠶⠿⠿⠿⠟⠛⠛⠋⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠛⠛⠻⠿⠿⠿⠶⠶⠶⠶⠶⠾⠿⠛⠛⠋⠁please upvote
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    I love to watch these kind of videos
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    cactus plural is cacti!
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    I am in 4th grade and I get it already?
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  • aqualine seedling style avatar for user yubing
    what is the plural of oaf? is it oaves or oafs? and is it a noun? please help me.
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    • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user Hecretary Bird
      Oaf is mainly used as an insulting term to call somebody a big, uncultured, troll-ish sort of person, and also to call somebody clumsy. An oaf is a type of person, so its a noun. We most commonly use "oafs", just like we say "beliefs" and "roofs" instead of the "-ves" version.
      (5 votes)

Video transcript

- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians today we're going to be talking about the irregular plural. Previously I had said that if you take any English word, any noun, say the word dog. And you tack an s onto the end of it like so. Boop you get the word dogs and that's how you form the plural in all cases. I was lying sorry, it turns out that English is a little bit more complicated than that. While adding an s to things is the way you usually make things plural, sometimes, there are other changes and sometimes you don't even pluralize using an s at the end. But what we're not going to talk about that now that's for another time. What I wanna talk about today, is the most basic kind of irregular plural, so we have the difference in English between regular and irregular plurals. And remember a plural is when there's more then one of something, it comes from the latin plus. Which means more. As opposed to the singular when there is just one of something. One dog, two dogs. So there is a handful of words in English and it really is a handful, that don't pluralize regularly. Words like leaf and loaf and calf. It's a baby cow. If you try to pluralize these as though they were regular plurals you're gonna return something that is not correct. Or at least is not conventional within modern standard American English right so leafs for example, unless you're talking about the Toronto hockey team, is not correct. In fact, the proper term boop. Is in fact leaves. It is not loafs but loaves. Tasty loaves of bread. It is not calfs but calves. So there are several different kinds of irregular plurals that's why this video is called part one. But I'm only going to cover one such irregular plural today and that is the change from singular f to plural v. So if you see a word, generally that ends in f. The plural is going to become v. You can learn anything David out.