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.

Grammar.net
[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