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WHY PLURALS ARE WEIRD
Most of the plurals in English have -s or -es at the end, even if they are of foreign origin. However, some of them retain their "original" plural forms. Eh... Actually, it's hard to call them "irregular" because there are some patterns.
There are 3 main reasons for English nouns to be "irregular": it they come from Latin, Greek, or Old English.
(although some people tend just to put -s at the end of plural form, which is also often considered correct)
1️⃣OLD ENGLISH
These nouns usually have -EN, -ICE (OUSE in the singular) at the end of the plural form or -EE- (with OO in the singular) in the middle
ox - oxen
child - children
mouse - mice
louse - lice
goose - geese
tooth - teeth
2️⃣LATIN
These ones also have a pattern derived from the language of origine:
-A at the end is changed to -AE,
-UM to -A,
-US to -I,
-EX to -ICES
Antenna - antennae OR antennas
Memorandum - memoranda OR memorandums
Cactus - cacti OR cactuses
index - indices OR indexes
3️⃣GREEK
Here we also change endings:
-ION to -IA
-MA to -MATA
criterion - criteria (form criterions is used very rarely)
dogma - dogmata OR dogmas
4️⃣GREEK OR LATIN
These are the words which came from Greek through Latin to English or vice versa, from Latin through Greek. In this group adding -S to form plurals in not common. So, you know the drill:
-ON to -A
-IS to -ES
phenomenon - phenomena
thesis - theses
Of course, there are plenty of other patterns got words of other origines, but we'll ta
1 минута
19 сентября 2021