MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH

  SmartMemo
Irregular Plurals
Focus Grammar
Description Practise the most important 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
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.
wife wives
sheep sheep
fish fish
child children
mouse mice
shelf shelves a thin flat plank of wood, metal, etc., fixed horizontally against a wall, etc., for the purpose of supporting objects
life lives
half halves BrE - /hɑ:f/  /hɑ:vz/
AmE - /hæf/  /hævz/
goose geese
leaf leaves
tooth teeth /tu:θ/  /ti:θ/
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
scarf scarves
that those /ðæt/  /ðəʊz/
 
knife knives
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".
this these /ðɪs/  /ði:z/
 
man men
wolf wolves /wʊlf/  /wʊlvz/
foot feet
Total number of items: 22
This is an activity from Multimedia-English www.multimedia-english.com