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Course: Grammar > Unit 1
Lesson 4: Irregular plural nouns: base plurals and irregular endingsIrregular 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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- What is the different between Could, Would, Should?(59 votes)
- Could tells the ability to do something.Would tells what would you do in future.Should is a formal permission.(6 votes)
- 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?(13 votes)
- Well, if something has an
fe
ending, it will always change toves
. If it has anff
ending, then it will always just adds
. If it just has anf
ending, you just have to memorize it. Sorry!(14 votes)
- 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)
- 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 finalf
sound changes to av
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)
- 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)- Soo we not talking about the username(3 votes)
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⠀⠀⠀⠉⠛⠛⠿⠿⠶⠶⠶⠶⠶⠿⠿⠿⠟⠛⠛⠋⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠛⠛⠻⠿⠿⠿⠶⠶⠶⠶⠶⠾⠿⠛⠛⠋⠁please upvote(8 votes) - I love to watch these kind of videos(7 votes)
- are you pushin p(6 votes)
- cactus plural is cacti!(3 votes)
- That's the subject of a lesson soon-to-come. Wait for it!(4 votes)
- I am in 4th grade and I get it already?(2 votes)
- Congratulations. Now go on to harder stuff.(5 votes)
- what is the plural of oaf? is it oaves or oafs? and is it a noun? please help me.(2 votes)
- 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.