Do you remember learning the English spelling of plurals? It was easy, right? All you had to do was to add a ‘s’ or ‘es’ to the noun, for example, orange – oranges, watch – watches.
How about all those irregular plurals, though? As always as soon as you learned a set of rules, the English Language would hit you with a list of exceptions to that set! How annoying was that!
In this infographic from Grammar.net examples of and the reason for some of the irregular plurals are shown in a fun and concise way.
[Infographic provided by Grammar.net]
Here are some further examples for each category that I thought I’d share with you.
Latin and Greek Origins
Phenomenon, phenomena
Focus, foci
Medium, media
Stimulus, stimuli
Nucleus, nuclei
Hippopotamus, hippopotami
Vertebra, vertebrae
Alga, algae
Radius, radii
Stadium, stadia (although ‘stadiums’ is more commonly used now)
Millennium, millennia
-ies
Family, families
Penny, pennies
Poppy, poppies
Pony, ponies
Baby, babies
Spy, spies
Party, parties
Try, tries
City, cities
-ves
Calf, calves
Life, lives
Leaf, leaves
Elf, elves
Dwarf, dwarves
Knife, knives
Wife, wives
Hoof, hooves
Wolf, wolves
Thief, thieves
Half, halves
Loaf, loaves
Identical Plurals
Offspring
Trout
Moose
Deer
Gold, silver, etc.
Salmon
Fish
Bison
Series
-en and vowel swaps
Man, men
Ox, oxen
Woman, women
Foot, feet
Goose, geese
Compound Nouns
Mothers-in-law
Sisters-in-law
New words
Die, dice
Louse, lice
English is a hotchpotch of exceptions and words that love to break the rules. Can you think of other words that are rule-breakers?
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Ciao for now
Shanthi
