Number and Rules of Changing Nouns to Plurals

 Number is a grammatical category that indicates whether a noun, pronoun, or verb is one or more than one. There are two types of numbers in grammar: singular and plural.

Singular Number:

When a noun refers to just one person, animal, place, thing, or quality, it is said to be singular in number. Examples include student, tiger, street, and apple.

Plural Number:

When a noun stands for two or more people, animals, places, things, or qualities, it is said to be plural in number. For example-students, tigers, streets, apples, etc.

 

Changing from singular to plural:

Most nouns in English form their plural by simply adding ‘s’ to the singular form. For nouns whose singular ends with ‘s’,  ‘sh’, ch’, ‘x’, or ‘z’, the ending ‘es’ has to be added to form the plural. For example:

Box-boxes

Miss- misses

Dish- dishes

Match-matches

 

Irregular Plurals

Nouns that end with ’y’, with a consonant coming before the ’y’, form their plural by changing the ’y’ into ‘I’ and adding ‘es’. For example: 

country- countries

 city- cities

enemy-enemies 

melody- melodies 

cherry-cherries 

story- stories

army-armies

 lady- ladies

But for nouns that end with ‘y’, with a vowel coming before the ‘y’, just add ‘s’. For example:

 valley- valleys

 donkey- donkeys

kidney- kidneys

journey- journeys

 

Nouns that end with ‘f’ from their plural either by simply adding ‘s’ or by changing the ‘f’ to ‘v’ and then adding ' es’. For example:

loaf- loaves

 Roof- roofs 

chief-chiefs 

shelf- shelves

 thief- thieves

 calf- calves

 wolf- wolves

 half- halves

 

Most nouns end with ‘o’ which forms their plural by adding simply ‘s’. For example:

 piano- pianos

 photo- photos

 Some words have peculiar plurals. For example: 

mouse- mice

radius- radii

 goose- geese

 tooth- teeth

 foot- feet