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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?
    (74 votes)
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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?
    (15 votes)
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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.
    (7 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.
      (28 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.
    (12 votes)
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  • mr pants pink style avatar for user Joyia :3
    what else is a noun
    (8 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Gulfaraz  Khan
    Generally f is changed to v to make a plural but it's not always like that and some f's are not changed to v's like ;
    Belief - Beliefs
    Cliff - Cliffs
    Chief - Chiefs
    Proof - Proofs
    So, how to know them and avoid mistake?
    (8 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Adriana Garcia
    Why did we decide to make it more complicated, so you can't just add an "s" to something to make it plural, like this how you can't make leaf "leafs", you have to make it "leaves". But then there are other things, like how you change the word entirely, like how you can't make some words plural with just an "s", or some words are the same plural. Why did we have to make it so complicated? It makes it harder for people who are trying to learn English.
    (6 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      There was no "we" and there was no "decision". The English language evolved this way. Your complaints are valid, but there is no court of appeals.

      Enjoy English and all its irregularities. If Spanish is a language with which you are familiar (if), check out all of the irregularities in the verbs there.
      (5 votes)
  • duskpin seed style avatar for user Madison
    Ves is for leaves
    S is for dogs
    Right
    (7 votes)
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  • piceratops tree style avatar for user Ellie
    Why did we decide to make it more complicated, so you can't just add an "s" to something to make it plural, like this how you can't make leaf "leafs", you have to make it "leaves". But then there are other things, like how you change the word entirely, like how you can't make some words plural with just an "s", or some words are the same plural. Why did we have to make it so complicated? It makes it harder for people who are trying to learn English.
    (4 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      Language is speech before it is writing. When people long ago vegan pluralizing nouns that ended in "f", on many words they began to pronounce the ending with a "v" sound (and added the "s"). Writing eventually reflected the speech, so that's where the rule comes from.

      You have a legitimate gripe in how this makes English harder for folks coming from a foreign language to learn English. However, babies growing up in an English-only environment do just fine, so it can't be TOO hard.
      (6 votes)
  • 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.
    (3 votes)
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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

- [David] 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 we're not gonna 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 than one of something. It comes from the Latin plus, which means "more." As opposed to the singular when there is just one of something. You know, one dog, two dogs. So there's a handful of words in English, and it really is a handful, that don't pluralize regularly. Words like "leaf" and "loaf" and "calf," that'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, boop, boop, boop, boop, 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 I, but I'm only going to cover one such irregular plural today, and that is the change from singular f to plural ve An important caveat, an important exception here is double-f. Words like "cliff" or "sheriff" or "sniff," do not change to ve or ves in the plural. They become "cliffs," "sheriffs," "sniffs." There are exceptions to that too, right? Like "staff" to "staves." But for the most part, double-f doesn't change to ve. Single f mostly does, right? That's the general rule. Singular word, ends in f, the plur will be ves. "Leaf" to "leaves," "loaf" to "loaves," "calf" to "calves." Generally, for the most part. English, ah, so silly. Who's driving this thing? We love it though. You can learn anything. David out.