1. Seven nouns distinguish plural from singular by vowel change:
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man - men woman – women |
tooth - teeth foot – feet |
goose - geese mouse - mice louse - lice |
2. Two nouns have -en to mark the plural:
ox - oxen, child - children.
Brother has two plural forms: brothers and brethren, the latter being used as a religious term or in elevated style to denote people of the same creed, not relations.
3. With some nouns the plural is identical with the singular form (for details see § 176, II):a) sheep-sheep (овца/ы);
swine - swine (свинья/и);
deer - deer (олень/и);
grouse - grouse (куропатка/и).
This sheep looks small. All those sheep are good.
I bought a grouse (three grouse for dinner).
There’re so many fish, they splinter the paddles.
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Note: There, are some animal names that have two plurals: fish - fish/fishes, pike - pike/pikes, trout - trout/trouts, carp –carp/carps, salmon - salmon/salmons. The zero plural is more common to denote hunting quarries (We caught only a few fish. We caught five salmon. He shot quail (перепелок) to make money), whereas the regular plural is used to denote different individuals, species, kinds of animal, especially fish with the same name or insects or other small animals which cause disease or damage. |
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The plant was covered in greenfly. This animal is infected with hookworm. |
There are three greenflies on my hand. Two large hookworms were found in his stomach. There were two quails for sale. |
b) identical singular and plural forms are also typical of nationality nouns in -ese, -ss: Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Swiss.
We met a Japanese. We met many Japanese on our holiday.
Note:
The word for people of the country is the same as the plural noun; the other way is to use substantivized adjectives in this sense:
Englishmen - the English Dutchmen - the Dutch.
c) two nouns borrowed from Latin and one from French also have identical forms for singular and plural:
series - series (ряд, серия);
species - species (вид, порода, род)
corps [ko:] - corps [ko:z] (корпус, род войск).
d) names, indicating number, such as:
pair, couple, dozen, score (два десятка),
stone (мера веса: 14 англ. фунтов = 6,35 кг) and
head (голова - поголовье скота)
have the same form for both the singular and plural when they are preceded by a numeral, that is, they
function as an indication of a kind of measure: two dozen of handkerchiefs, five dozen of eggs. The child
weighs two stone. One thousand head of cattle.
But when they have no number as predeterminer they take the usual plural form: dozens of times, to go in pairs.
4. A number of foreign (particularly Latin and Greek) nouns have retained their original plural endings.
Loans of Greek origin
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Singular |
Plural |
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-is [ɪs] basis crisis analysis thesis parenthesis axis hypothesis diagnosis
-on [ǝn] criterion phenomenon
-а [ǝ] miasma |
-es [i:z] bases crises analyses theses parentheses axes hypotheses diagnoses
-а [ǝ] criteria phenomena
-ata [ǝtǝ] miasmata |
Loans of Latin origin
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-us [ǝs] stimulus nucleus radius corpus genus
-а [ǝ] formula antenna vertebra
-um [ǝm] datum stratum erratum
-es,-ix [ɪks] index appendix matrix |
-i [ai] -ога [ǝrǝ] -era [ǝrǝ] stimuli nuclei radii corpora genera
-ае [i:] formulae (or regular - formulas) antennae vertebrae
-a [ǝ] data strata errata
-ices [ɪsi;z] indices appendices matrices |
[i:z] or indexes or appendixes or matzixes |
