Singular & Plurals

Concept: Revisit: One vs Many

Definition:

A) Singular Noun:

• A singular noun talks about only one person, place, animal, or thing.
• Examples of singular nouns show only one person – doctor, carpenter, place – park, lake, animal – frog, monkey, and object – camera, pencil.

B) Plural Noun:

• A plural noun talks about more than one person, animal, place, or thing.
• Above mentioned pictures are examples of plural nouns because they denote more than one person – girls, farmers, places – hospitals, schools, animal – snakes, cats, and thing – shoes, cars.

Examples:

Nouns	Singular Nouns		Plural Nouns
Person
Place
Animals
Things

Rules to Make Singular Nouns into a Plural noun

a) Add ‘s’ with the singular noun to make it into a plural noun.

Examples:

The singular form is ‘dog’.

The plural form is ‘dogs’.

To make a singular noun into a plural noun, we added ‘-s’ with the singular noun.

b) Add ‘-es’ if a singular noun ends with ‘s’, ‘ss’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘x’, or ‘z’.

These nouns are known as irregular nouns.

Examples:

c) If a singular noun ends with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), add a ‘s’ with the singular noun to make it into a plural noun.

Examples:

d) When a singular noun ends with a consonant and ‘y’, change the ‘y’ to ‘i’ and add ‘-es’ with the singular noun to make into a plural noun.

Examples:

Common mistakes:

There are a few irregular nouns that don’t add letters at the end of a singular noun to make it a plural one. These plural nouns change the words themselves. Don’t add ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ with the singular nouns to turn them into plural nouns.

Examples:

I have two children.

I have two childs.