Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast that teaches English in context so you can learn naturally.
English is a difficult language.
We have some weird words, some weird spelling, some weird pronunciation, some very strange vowel sounds, and one thing that we also have is weird plural words.
Now we know the main rule when it comes to making a plural word.
You just add an S or an E -S at the end of the word.
However, there are some words that don't follow this pattern, but they might follow another pattern so you can try to distinguish them and figure out how to make the plural form.
So if you're interested in learning about these weird plural words, how to pronounce them and how to recognize their patterns, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we begin, a quick reminder to look at the description of this podcast episode and of our previous podcast episodes.
There you will find a vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I use in the episode.
That way you can take these words and phrases, put them into your own vocabulary learning system and hopefully start using them in conversation yourself.
Now let's talk about these weird plural words.
There are so many words that come from Latin, Greek, German, all of these different origins.
And what happens is when we get the influence of these languages into the English language, we get these words that don't always follow the normal pattern when we're trying to make them plural.
Let's start with our first category of weird plural words and let's use the ones that are influenced by Latin and Greek.
These words come from the Latin and Greek languages, and that's why they have a unique ending when they become a plural version of the word.
What you want to do is you want to look at the ending of these words and the examples that we're going to do.
A lot of them end with a U S or an I S ending.
When we change these, you'll see that we can either change them to be an I ending or an E S ending.
Let's go through some examples.
Let's start with some Latin based words.
We're going to start with three Latin words in their singular form and then talk about how to change them into plural.
Our first one is cactus.
Cactus is a plant that is usually in the desert, and the ending of cactus is U S.
When we want to change this word to be a plural version, because it already ends in an S, we're not going to add another S.
Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to change it from cact -us to cact -i.
The U S part gets changed to an I.
So if I have one singular cactus, it's cactus, if I have multiple cactus plants, I'm going to say that I have a lot of cacti.
Let's focus on two more words that are going to follow this pattern.
Our next one is alumnus.
Alumnus. Alumnus is a person who has graduated from a school.
So let's say you go to a particular school or university.
When you graduate, you become an alumnus.
This comes from the Latin word that means student or pupil.
Alumnus ends in a U S just like cactus does.
So we're going to follow the same rule.
We're going to take the U S part.
We're going to switch it to become an I.
Instead of alumnus, we're going to say alumni, alumni.
When you talk to a group of people who have graduated from a particular university, you are addressing a group of alumni.
Our last word is going to be focus.
An area of focus is something that you're looking at or something that you're putting your attention into.
Focus or concentration.
If you think of the word focus, it ends in a U S ending.
So take a second and think to yourself if the singular version is focus.
What's the plural going to be?
Hopefully you thought fokai.
We're going to take that U S ending, replace it with an I and have fokai.
Fokai. So if you have multiple areas of focus, you have a lot of fokai.
Now let's look at some Greek influenced words.
These are words that in the singular form already end in an I S ending.
What we're going to do when they end in an I S ending, we're going to change them and change it to be an E S ending.
Let's look at some examples.
A crisis. A crisis is something that's going wrong, something that needs attention right away.
Let's say there's a major earthquake in a country and a lot of people no longer have homes, no longer have shelter.
That is a crisis, something that needs immediate attention and especially on a large scale.
Crisis ends in an I S ending.
And if you have multiple crisis, what we're going to say is we have crises, crises.
If you listen to the difference when I am pronouncing this crisis, crises, there is a vowel change because the spelling of the plural form of the word ends in an E S.
Another one that follows this pattern is a thesis.
A thesis is what you have when you are usually getting your master's or doctoral degree.
It's an area of study and it is what you write your thesis paper on, a particular issue.
And with thesis, again, it ends in an I S ending.
When we have multiple thesis, what we're going to say is we're going to have theses.
Theses. Again, that's very similar to what we have with crisis and crises.
Thesis, theses. Taking that I S ending and changing it to an E S.
And two of my favorite when it comes to Greek based words are two different animals.
The first one is an octopus, the eight legged sea creature that lives in the sea and they're so cute and they're so smart.
And the second one is a hippopotamus.
A hippopotamus is a land mammal, pretty large, based in Africa.
Or if you're in Colombia, there's some hippopotamuses that are from the narcos era and they were brought into Colombia, so you can find them there as well.
When we look at the ending of octopus and hippopotamus, they end in a U S ending, but they are not Latin.
So sometimes people like to treat them like a Latin based word and take that U S ending and change it to be an I ending like we did with cactus.
For example, with octopus, this would become octopi and hippopotami as the plural version of hippopotamus.
Now like I said, this is a little bit different because these words are not actually Latin.
They're actually Greek.
So some people argue that that is incorrect, that they should not follow the Latin rules because they are not Latin words and instead they should have an additional E S ending at the end.
Therefore, you can also hear the plural version of octopus being octopuses and hippopotamus being hippopotamuses.
Oh my goodness, that's just so funny to say.
There's actually a song that's a Christmas song here in the United States about a little girl singing how she wants a hippopotamus for Christmas and she sings hippopotamuses.
And that is just one of the ways that I always remembered this when I was trying to figure out the plural version of hippopotamus and it's something you can keep in mind when you think of this word.
I'll leave a link to the song, a video of the song so you can see what I'm referring to.
It's controversial.
Like I said, you can hear both versions.
Both versions are technically acceptable.
I would say the E S ending is more common for them, more modern for them, but sometimes people still do use that I ending treating it like a Latin word.
Now let's talk about some other weird plural words and these are plural words that have a vowel mutation.
This means that instead of adding an S to the end, we actually change the vowel that's in the word.
There's a number of these once you actually think about it, so it is more common than we realize, but let's go over some examples to really show what this means.
The first example we're going to have is man and woman.
Man and woman are the singular version of the words.
When we change them to be plural though, we don't put an S.
We say men for man, man becomes men having that vowel change from an A to an E and woman becomes women, women.
If you hear how I'm pronouncing it, I have to say this is very specific for my accent.
Not everywhere that you go in the English speaking world, we'll pronounce it like this.
Sometimes people will say, well man, I never say it like that.
That is not my particular accent.
I say woman for a singular version and women for a plural version.
That's me. That's my particular accent.
I'm from Southern California and that's the accent that I speak with.
Everyone has an accent.
We all have an accent and that just happens to be mine.
In both of those cases, either way, how you pronounce it, the A vowel sound got switched over to an E vowel sound.
We'll see this also with a couple more examples.
When we talk, we can see our teeth.
The individual has an OO as the vowel sound, a tooth, but when you have multiple of them, they are teeth with an E vowel sound.
You have one individual foot on one leg and another individual foot on another leg.
But when you talk about both of them, you say that you have two feet.
Another example of this is an animal, a goose.
A goose is a type of bird.
You usually see them in parks, around ponds, and in lakes.
A singular version of this bird is a goose, has that double O vowel sound.
But when we change it to be the plural version, we're going to say geese, geese.
That double O becomes a double E, just like with teeth, feet, geese, all of them have a double E vowel sound.
Now our next group of words comes from Old English.
English has actually changed a lot if you look at how English has evolved over the past millennia, over the past thousand years, there's a lot of difference in the English that we speak now versus the English of the 1300s.
For example, when we take the words from Old English, you know the words from Old English because of the ending of the plural form.
These are words that when we change it to be a plural form, they have an E, an ending.
There's a couple of examples of these, and let's look at them.
The first one is child.
When you have a child, when you just have one of them, that is the singular version of the word.
But once you have your second child, once you have more than one, they become your children.
Child adds an R -E -N ending to the word.
Another example of this is an ox.
An ox is an animal you usually see on farms, and when you have a singular ox, just one of them, the word is spelled O -X.
But when you have a plural, again, we're going to add an E -N ending, so this is going to become oxen.
Multiple ox become oxen.
Our next group of words are going to be words that end in F, and when we change them to be in the plural version, we change the F to a V -E ending.
For example, let's take a leaf, a single leaf on a tree that is growing.
It is spelled L -E -A -F.
When you talk about multiple of these things on a tree, we take that F at the end of the word and change it to a V -E -S ending.
Leaves, leaves. Taking that F, changing it to the V -E -S ending.
Another example is if you're talking about a loaf of bread.
A single loaf of bread is spelled L -O -A -F.
When you have multiple of these, you have loaves of bread, loaves.
Another example of this pattern is when we look at the animal, a wolf.
A wolf is an ancestor to the modern dog.
When you have a single wolf, usually we call that a lone wolf, the spelling of the word is W -O -L -F.
When you think of the plural version, take a second in your mind and see if you can do this, you're going to change the F to a V -E -S ending.
Wolf is going to become wolves.
You're still keeping that O -L vowel sound, but you're adding the V -E -S ending, wolves.
Another example that can be found in your kitchen, you might have a knife in your kitchen.
You might have a single knife in your kitchen or you might have a block that has multiple of them, and the multiple version, the plural version would be knives.
There's actually a Daniel Craig movie called Knives out on Netflix, so if you can picture that word in your head, that is what we are saying.
We are saying knives.
Knife is a complicated word.
We've talked about how to pronounce this word.
I actually did an entire episode on how to pronounce ten of the most tricky English words.
If you're watching on YouTube, I'm going to leave an iCard for you so you can check out that episode if you're interested, but we went over how to pronounce a knife because it has that silent K at the beginning of the word.
Now, my personal favorite grouping of words that have a weird plural version are the words that don't change.
These are words that stay the same no matter if you're talking about a singular or a plural version.
I know it's a little bit confusing, but once you understand what these words are, once you know what these words are, at least it's one less thing to think about.
One hint for these words.
They usually are animals.
We'll go through a list, but these are usually animals.
When you have this particular type of word that does not change.
Our first one is a fish, the creature that swims in the ocean.
Whether you are talking about a single fish or an entire school of fish, the word does not change.
Fish, fish, singular or plural.
Never fishes. Do not say fishes.
That is not correct.
Let's talk about two specific types of fish.
There are trout and salmon.
These two particular type of fish do not change depending on being singular or plural.
Always trout, always salmon, no matter how many you have.
When we talk about land animals, there are a number that follow this pattern.
In the forest, you can find deer or moose.
In the United States, we have indigenous bison and on farms, you can also have sheep and swine.
Swine is a weird way, a different type of way of saying a pig.
Most people will say the word pig, but when you're talking, sometimes people will say swine.
All of those all follow the same rule.
Trout, salmon, deer, moose, bison, sheep, and swine are all going to stay the same no matter what.
You never have a plural version.
You never say deers.
It's always deer. You never say bisons, always just bison.
All of these animals are different from each other.
They make up multiple species of animals.
So a species is a classification system when you're talking about animals.
And if you have one species or if you have multiple species, again, that doesn't change.
I know it can be a little bit confusing, but like I said, once you learn what these particular words are, it's just one less thing to think about.
You don't have to make them into a plural form.
They just stay the same.
And then two words that don't seem to follow really any pattern.
We have two words that just do their own rules.
Dice are used when you play games, when you are betting on something.
Sometimes people can play dice.
And that's usually when you are talking about two.
Sometimes more if you're playing games that use more pieces.
And so we're used to hearing the word dice, D -I -C -E.
However, when you only have one of them at a time, the actual singular version is a die, D -I -E.
So you might have an individual die or if you have more, you have dice.
Another word that has its own unique rules is a person.
You might have one person, but if you have multiple, you have people.
There really is no pattern to how that word just changes.
It just goes from person to people.
It's one of those things you just kind of have to memorize.
I hope you liked this episode and I hope you got some exposure to these weird plural words.
You might have seen them before, especially if you have been studying English for a long time.
You probably have been exposed to them in the past.
But hopefully this helped review some of these weird rules.
And you know, every time you see them, every time you get exposed to them, it gets a little bit easier.
It takes multiple repetitions to learn new words.
So hopefully this episode helps you get another repetition in, get some more practice with these weird plural words.
If you liked this episode, if it helped you, if you found it interesting, please let me know.
English has so many weird words.
There are so many rules, so many things that break the rules, so many exceptions, and there's a lot of episodes we could do about weird words.
Like I said, we did an entire episode on how to pronounce the 10 most tricky words.
And there's just more tricky words in English.
So if you found this interesting, if you found this helpful, please let me know.
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Tell me if this helped you.
Tell me if you liked this episode, and if you would like more episodes like this in the future.
Like I said, there's so many more that I could do, but I don't know to do them unless you tell me.
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