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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?(77 votes)
- Could tells the ability to do something.Would tells what would you do in future.Should is a formal permission.(18 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?(14 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!(19 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.(7 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.(28 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.(12 votes)- Soo we not talking about the username(9 votes)
- what else is a noun(8 votes)
- Anything that is a Person, Place, Thing, or Abstract concept
Physics is a noun(Abstract noun)
Joyia is a noun(Contrete noun)
Khan Academy is a noun(7 votes)
- 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)- You can't know them to avoid mistakes. The best you can do, when you need to write one, is to check a dictionary for the plural form. When you need to speak one, try both (sotto voce) and figure which is easier to pronounce. That will probably be a good indication.(6 votes)
- 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)
- 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)
- Ves is for leaves
S is for dogs
Right(7 votes) - 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)
- 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)
- what is the plural of oaf? is it oaves or oafs? and is it a noun? please help me.(3 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
- [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.