Singular Nouns vs Plural Nouns with 4 Plural Noun Rules and a Practice Test

The objective for this lesson is to learn about singular and plural nouns.  We’ll look at how you can change a single noun into a plural noun and some rules to follow to do that.

A singular noun is one thing like a phone, the cat, his ball, and our church.  “The basketball player is shooting a basketball on the court.” All the nouns in this sentence are singular nouns, there is only one player, one basketball and one court.

A plural noun is more than one person, place or thing.  The plural could be just two or a million, that doesn’t matter.  There are four different ways to change a singular noun into a plural noun:

1. Add a “s” to the end of the word. Phone becomes phones, book becomes books, pencil becomes pencils, etc. “Basketball players play basketball games”, there are now at least two players and they are playing more than one game.
2. Words ending in the letters s, x, ch, and sh need something besides just a “s” to make them plural. Words ending with these four types of letters need to have an “es” added instead.  Ax becomes axes, dish becomes dishes, and bench becomes benches. “The girls look at all the dresses”, this has two plural nouns that use different rules.  Girl can become a plural by just adding a “s” but dress needs “es” instead.
3. This rule is for making nouns that end with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u, y).  These words get a “s” added, very much like in the first rule.  Toy becomes toys, bee becomes bees, zoo becomes zoos and so on. “The boys took their toys to the lake and went fishing.” The two plural nouns, “boys” and “toys”, just needed a “s”.
4. Nouns ending with a consonant “y” are a little different. This time the “y” changes to “i” and “es” is added too. City becomes cities, family become families. “Many families trave in the airport with their suitcases.” Suitcase became plural just by adding the “s” but family changed the “y” to “i” and added “es”.

Practice writing the plural for these words:

1. glass
2. idea
3. month
4. toy
5. ocean
6. party
7. body

“glass” becomes “glasses”.  “Glass” ends with a “s” so you add “es” to make it plural.

“idea” becomes “ideas”. You just need a “s” because it’s a normal noun ending in a vowel.

“month” becomes “months”.  The “th” at the end is not one of the special combinations from the second rule, you only need to add an “s”.

“toy” becomes “toys”. The “y” is a vowel in this word and you only need to add the “s” to make it plural.

“ocean” becomes “oceans”.  It is a normal noun so we just add the “s”.

“party” becomes “parties”.  This time the “y” is a consonant so it is changed to “i” and “es” is added.

“body” becomes “bodies”.  Again, the “y” is a consonant so it needs to be changed to “ies”.