English plurals apply to nouns, pronouns, and verbs. Most nouns use -s or -es as suffixes, but there are exceptions. Pronouns and verbs change completely. Exceptions include -ies for words ending in -y and Latin plurals. English has irregular plurals. Apostrophes in possessive endings can change meaning.
An English plural is the form of a word in the English language that refers to more than one of something. Plural forms generally apply to nouns, pronouns, and verb forms. Most nouns in English use three specific suffixes to indicate their plural forms, but there are many exceptions. Pronouns and verbs can change completely to indicate the plural, although this is not always the case.
The basic written forms of the English plural suffix for nouns are -s, pronounced as (s) or (z), and -es, pronounced as (ez). If the ending -s follows a voiced sound — these are the sounds for which the vocal folds meet and vibrate, such as (z), (m), (g) or a vowel — it sounds like a (z). Examples include “dogs,” where the ending uses (z); “cats”, which preserves the voiceless(s); and “boxes,” which he uses (ez). The ending -es usually appears after the letters and letter sequences “x”, “s”, “sh” and “ch”.
English plural noun forms have several exceptions, including the use of -ies for words ending in -y and the use of Latin plural endings for words borrowed from Latin. Other regular exceptions include mass nouns, such as “water,” which do not change form to indicate the plural when used in the general sense of drinking, finding, or using water. English is also full of irregular plurals that don’t follow any rules, and memorization is the only way to remember how to form them. For example, if someone goes fishing for bass, he or she won’t necessarily catch just one. The word “bass”, as in fish, is both singular and plural even if it is not a mass noun.
Most English plural pronouns change their form completely in English. The first person singular pronoun “I”, for example, does not become “is” or “I”, but instead changes to “we”. Third person pronouns change to “they” or “them” if possessive. The second person pronoun, “you”, remains the same in the plural.
A confusing situation in English is the use of the possessive ending of -‘s, which has an apostrophe. If the apostrophe appears in the wrong place, or doesn’t appear where it should, it can change the meaning of the word. For example, “cani” is the plural of “dog”, but “dog” is the possessive form of the singular “dog”. For this reason, writers must be very careful about using the apostrophe correctly.
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