Irregular plurals
For historical reasons certain nouns form their plural differently.
1. Seven nouns distinguish plural from singular by vowel change:
|
man - men woman - women |
tooth - teeth foot – feet |
goose - geese mouse - mice louse - lice |
2. Two nouns have -en to mark the plural:
ox - oxen, child - children.
Brother has two plural forms: brothers and brethren, the latter being used as a religious term or in elevated style to denote people of the same creed, not relations.
3. With some nouns the plural is identical with the singular form :
a) sheep-sheep ;
swine - swine;
deer - deer;
grouse - grouse.
This sheep looks small. All those sheep are good.
I bought a grouse (three grouse for dinner).
There’re so many fish, they splinter the paddles.
|
Note: There, are some animal names that have two plurals: fish - fish/fishes, pike - pike/pikes, trout - trout/trouts, carp –carp/carps, salmon - salmon/salmons. The zero plural is more common to denote hunting quarries (We caught only a few fish. We caught five salmon. He shot quail (перепелок) to make money), whereas the regular plural is used to denote different individuals, species, kinds of animal, especially fish with the same name or insects or other small animals which cause disease or damage.
| |
|
The plant was covered in greenfly. This animal is infected with hookworm. |
There are three greenflies on my hand. Two large hookworms were found in his stomach. There were two quails for sale.
|
b) identical singular and plural forms are also typical of nationality nouns in -ese, -ss: Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Swiss.
We met a Japanese. We met many Japanese on our holiday.
Note:
The word for people of the country is the same as the plural noun; the other way is to use substantivized adjectives in this sense:
Englishmen - the English Dutchmen - the Dutch.
c) two nouns borrowed from Latin and one from French also have identical forms for singular and plural:
series - series;
species - species;
corps [ko:] - corps [ko:z] .
d) names, indicating number, such as:
pair, couple, dozen, score , stone and head
have the same form for both the singular and plural when they are preceded by a numeral, that is, they function as an indication of a kind of measure: two dozen of handkerchiefs, five dozen of eggs.
The child weighs two stone. One thousand head of cattle.
But when they have no number as predeterminer they take the usual plural form: dozens of times, to go in pairs.
4. A number of foreign (particularly Latin and Greek) nouns have retained their original plural endings.
Loans of Greek origin
-
Singular
-is [is]
basis
crisis
analysis
thesis
parenthesis
axis
hypothesis
diagnosis
Plural
-es [i:z]
bases
crises
analyses
theses
parentheses
axes
hypotheses
diagnoses
-on [ǝn]
criterion
phenomenon
-а [ǝ]
criteria
phenomena
-а [ǝ]
miasma
-ata [ǝtǝ]
miasmata
|
Loans of Latin origin
|
| |||||||||||||||
|
Other loan nouns
|
| |||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
| |||||||||||||
|
|
|
As can be seen from the above list some loan nouns may have two plural forms: the English plural and the original foreign one:
|
|
memoranda memorandums
|
focus |
foci focuses
| |
|
|
curricula curriculums
|
|
|
|
|
|
formulae formulas
|
|
|
|
|
|
cheribum cherubs |
|
|
|
memorandum
curriculum
formula
cherubThere is a tendency to use the regular English plural forms in fiction and colloquial English and the foreign plural in academic or learned language.
Sometimes different plural forms have different meanings:
|
|
indexes (list of contents of books) indices (a mathematical term )
|
|
|
geniuses (men of talent) genii (fabulous spirits guarding a place)
|
index
genius