MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH

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Irregular Plurals
Focus Grammar
Description Practise the most common irregular plurals until you master them all.
Instructions 1- Look at the words and think of its singular/plural form 2- Move your mouse over the black button to check your answer. 3- If you were right click on the green button, if wrong, click on the red.
 
Item Match Comments
alumnus alumni /əlʌmnəs/  /əlʌmn/
(formal) a male university student
self selves Your self is your essence, your true being. We most often use it in compounds: myself, yourself... themselves
She pretends to care about people but that's not her true self
I think he's a bit crazy, I saw him talking to himself in the bar
person people Some speakers of other languages (especially Spanish") often use "people" in the singular:
In Mexico people is very nice
This is wrong, since "people" is an irregular plural and it should be:
In Mexico people are very nice

Now, the word "people" can also mean "nation", and in that case it is a regular word: people - peoples
Moses said to the Pharaoh: Let my people go
His majesty, the people is tired of this war.
Today is a great day for all the peoples in the world
alumna alumnae /əlʌmnə/  /əlʌmni:/
(formal) a female university student
this these /ðɪs/  /ði:z/
 
foot feet
sheep sheep
louse lice /laʊs/  /laɪs/
A louse is a very small insect which sometimes parasites the head of people, hiding among their hair.
deer deer
half halves BrE - /hɑ:f/  /hɑ:vz/
AmE - /hæf/  /hævz/
shelf shelves a thin flat plank of wood, metal, etc., fixed horizontally against a wall, etc., for the purpose of supporting objects
fish fish
child children
series series /sɪəri:z/
This TV series is very funny
I think all series are rubbish
index indices /indeks/  /ɪndɪsi:z/
medium media
hoof hooves The hard foot of some animals, for example a horse
wolf wolves /wʊlf/  /wʊlvz/
man men
loaf loaves A shaped mass of bread baked in one piece. A loaf is the complete thing made of bread, and when you eat, you break it into pieces of bread. So you usually buy, for example, two loaves, or two loaves of bread, you never buy a piece of bread.
woman women /wʊmən/  /wɪmɪn/
 
penny pence In the UK a pound has 100 pence, though very often people simply say "p": 1p /pi:/ 2p /pi:/
In America "penny" is a colloquial word for "cent", and the plural is "pennies".
wife wives
ox oxen An adult castrated bull (they castrate them to make them milder and stronger)
leaf leaves
tooth teeth /tu:θ/  /ti:θ/
life lives
scarf scarves
elf elves A small, often mischievous creature considered to have magical powers. Other similar creatures: dwarf, leprechaun, gnome
die dice /daɪ/  /daɪs/
A die is a small cube with numbers (usually dots) from 1 to 6 on every side, and it is used to get a random number in many games.
Anyway, it is also very common to use DICE both for singular and plural: one dice, two dice.
cherub cherubim plural also CHERUBS
/tʃerəb/  /tʃerəbɪm/
in Christianity, a member of the second order of angels, whose distinctive gift is knowledge, often represented as a winged child or winged head of a child. (word of Hebrew origin)
knife knives
calf calves CALF= A young cow or bull / The fleshy muscular back part of the human leg between the knee and ankle.
BrE - /kɑ:f/ /kɑ:vz/
AmE - /kæf/ /kævz/
mouse mice
millenium millenia
that those /ðæt/  /ðəʊz/
 
goose geese
Total number of items: 37
This is an activity from Multimedia-English www.multimedia-english.com