MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH

  SmartMemo
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
fish fish
woman women /wʊmən/  /wɪmɪn/
 
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.
wolf wolves /wʊlf/  /wʊlvz/
millenium millenia
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
alumnus alumni /əlʌmnəs/  /əlʌmn/
(formal) a male university student
elf elves A small, often mischievous creature considered to have magical powers. Other similar creatures: dwarf, leprechaun, gnome
louse lice /laʊs/  /laɪs/
A louse is a very small insect which sometimes parasites the head of people, hiding among their hair.
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.
knife knives
child children
hoof hooves The hard foot of some animals, for example a horse
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".
man men
scarf scarves
goose geese
tooth teeth /tu:θ/  /ti:θ/
life lives
that those /ðæt/  /ðəʊz/
 
sheep sheep
medium media
ox oxen An adult castrated bull (they castrate them to make them milder and stronger)
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)
wife wives
foot feet
shelf shelves a thin flat plank of wood, metal, etc., fixed horizontally against a wall, etc., for the purpose of supporting objects
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/
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
index indices /indeks/  /ɪndɪsi:z/
alumna alumnae /əlʌmnə/  /əlʌmni:/
(formal) a female university student
mouse mice
leaf leaves
deer deer
half halves BrE - /hɑ:f/  /hɑ:vz/
AmE - /hæf/  /hævz/
series series /sɪəri:z/
This TV series is very funny
I think all series are rubbish
this these /ðɪs/  /ði:z/
 
Total number of items: 37
This is an activity from Multimedia-English www.multimedia-english.com