Plural Nouns
Level A1 · Sentence Basics
Most nouns are countable: they have a singular form (one thing) and a plural form (more than one). Use the plural whenever you mean more than one: one cat, two cats.
Regular plural spelling:
- most nouns just add -s (cat → cats, book → books)
- nouns ending in -s, -ss, -sh, -ch, -x or -z add -es (bus → buses, box → boxes, watch → watches)
- a consonant + y changes to -ies (baby → babies), but a vowel + y just adds -s (boy → boys, key → keys)
- many nouns ending in -f or -fe change to -ves (knife → knives, leaf → leaves), though a few just add -s (roof → roofs)
Common irregular plurals (no rule — learn them):
- man → men, woman → women, child → children, person → people
- foot → feet, tooth → teeth, mouse → mice
- some nouns don't change at all: sheep → sheep, fish → fish, deer → deer
The most common mistake is adding -s to nouns that already have an irregular plural or don't change: two childs, three sheeps and my feets are wrong — say two children, three sheep, my feet. Once a noun has its own plural, you never add -s on top.
Plurals appear after numbers above one and after quantity words like many, several, some, a few, a lot of, and these/those. If a number or a quantity word points to more than one, the noun is almost always plural.