Target Audience: First Year Polytechnic English teachers and students in Tamilnadu.
Subject: Communication English-1, M scheme, I semester
Objective: To enable the students recognize, form and use Plurals in English.
Question pattern in Exam: I.4. Write the Plurals in the blanks (3 marks)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why plurals?
We generally use plurals to refer to countable nouns which are more than one in number. Example : boy-boys, city – cities and message – messages . If everything ends with one, then Maths has to lose its entire property. Imagine the world without plurals :A man has to remain a bachelor (singular) with the ego “I”, not with love to say “we”. A wife can make only a complaint, not Complaints. People will have worry, not worries. There will be only God, not gods.
Regular and Irregular Plurals :
Most of the English singular nouns become plurals by just adding -s to them. These plurals are called regular plurals. Yes, chair-chairs, girl-girls and chance-chances.
Irregular plurals are those which are formed not just by adding -s but in different ways and sometimes in mysterious ways like sages without any change both in singular and plural: tax-taxes, wife-wives, strawberry -strawberries, child-children, man-men and fish-fish.
Rules for changing singular into plural:
Rule 1
Add -es if a word ends in -ch, -x, -s or -ss
Examples : watch -watches, batch-batches, box-boxes, fox-foxes, bus-buses, gas-gases kiss-kisses
Rule 2
Change the -fe and -f endings into –ves
Examples: life- lives, knife-knives, leaf-leaves, shelf-shelves
Rule 3
A vowel + y ending just adds -s but a consonant +y changes the -y into -ies.
Examples : boy-boys, ,toy -toys , way-ways but lorry-lorries, baby-babies, lady-ladies
Rule 4
Certain nouns become plurals with internal vowel change.
Examples : man-men, woman-women, foot-feet, tooth-teeth, mouse-mice, goose-geese
Rule 5
Nouns ending in -o are careless guys since they take -s or -es or both sometimes to form their plurals.
Examples : (-es only) hero-heroes, potato -potatoes, echo-echoes, tomato-tomatoes
(-s only) auto-autos, photo-photos, video -videos, memo -memos, piano -pianos
(both -s and -es are correct) motto -mottos and mottoes, mosquito -mosquitos and mosquitoes, zero -zeros and zeroes, volcano -volcanos and volcanoes
Rule 6
Some words totally change in plural forms.
Examples : person – people , child -children , ox-oxen, penny -pence, die-dice , he - they, I - we
Rule 7
Some words never change both in singular and plural.
Examples : fish, deer, sheep, swine, aircraft and spacecraft , you - you
Rule 8
Some nouns have no plural at all and they are only used as singular.
Examples : Information, luggage, baggage, furniture, equipment
Rule 9
Foreign plurals are formed differently in the following ways :
A. -is ending into -es: axis-axes, basis-bases, synopsis -synopses, thesis -theses
B.Change -us ending into -i : alumnus-alumni, syllabus. -syllabi, nucleus -nuclei, stimulus -stimuli
C.Change -um and -on ending into -a : bacterium -bacteria, medium -media, datum-data, symposium -symposia , criterion -criteria
Rule 10
Beware of some problematic singular nouns that will tempt you to change their adjectives into plurals not the nouns. If both words are nouns in a compound word, change both into plural as in the fourth example given below.
A. Brother-in-law ----- brothers-in-law (not brother-in-laws)
B.Passerby ------- passersby (not passerbys)
C.Poet laureate ------ poets laureate (not poet laureates)
D.Man- servant ------- men -servants
(Sister-in-law , father-in-law and mother-in-law follow the same way as given for the first example above.)
Exercise for you:
Write the plurals in the blanks.
1._________(kid) like ice-cream, don’t they?
2.They were punished for hunting _________ (deer).
3.The fight between _________(mother-in-law) and _________ (daughter-in-law )is an eternal issue in India.
4.These engineers are actually _________(alumnus) of our college.
5.The dentist replaced my ________ (tooth) with artificial ones.
6.Some ________ (lady) are like ________ (lorry) and are likely to be met with accident but some others are like _______ (baby) who teach you innocence.
7.________(wife) are _______ (knife) and need to be handled with utmost care.
8.The _______ (syllabus) framed by experts nowadays are substandard or impractical.
9.Downloading _______ (photo) and _______(video) more brings your data balance into zero soon.
10._______ (person) with ______(penny) are without _______ (child) and vice versa.
No comments:
Post a Comment