Making Nouns Plural
In English, a noun is used to show a person, a place, or a thing. If we have one noun, we call it singular. For example, dog, tree, and city are all singular nouns. If we want to show that we have more than one noun, we need to make the noun plural. For most nouns, this means adding the letter "s" to the end of the word (dog, trees). If a noun only needs "s", we call it a regular noun. For other nouns, called irregular nouns, we need to change the word's ending to make it plural (city → cities). Read the following resource to review regular and irregular singular and plural nouns.
Plural forms of nounsGenerally, making plurals (more than 1 of something) is very easy in English. For almost all nouns we form the plural by adding s.
For nouns that end with the letter y, we form the plural by removing the y and adding ies.
For nouns that end with the letter s (dress), ch (beach), x (box), sh (bush) or z (quiz), we form the plural by adding es.
There are also a small number of nouns that are very irregular. The first word in the following list is the singular form and the second word is the plural form:
As you can see, with some words there is no change to form the plural. The plural form and the singular form are exactly the same. |
Complete this Exercise
Check your understanding of the plural form of nouns by answering these eight questions. The next question will appear after you select an answer.
Source: Wikibooks, https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/English_as_an_Additional_Language/Plural_forms_of_nouns
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