Hello!
This video is about irregular plurals. First of all, the very irregular ones, of which
there are half a dozen, then the ones which look plural (I'll just underline 'look' there)
because they're not really. And the ones that look singular (I'll just underline 'look'
again) because they're not really.
Hope you enjoy it!
We're looking at three ways of forming the plural which are irregular. First of all the
six very irregular plural forms we have in English, well, there are more than six but
six common ones. I'll put the initials of three of them up here: the 'm', the 'w' and
the 'ch' - you need to look at the computer picture to get them (two of them). It's 'man',
plural 'men' and it's 'woman', I'll write 'woman' there, plural 'women' and I'm going
to write the way we pronounce the plural there 'wimmin'. It's 'women'-'wimmin', quite different,
the two sounds. 'Ch' is for 'child', again a difference, 'child', 'children', 'child',
'children'.
And here are three more. These three are all connected to the two - the 't', the 'f' and
the 'm'. Can you get which ones they are? 'T', boy on the right, 'tooth' - he's got
lots of 'teeth' and 'foot', they've both got 'feet' and finally, in the boy's right pocket
and in his hand 'mouse' and two 'mice'. And if you look a bit further there aren't two
mice in the picture, there are three, because there's one on the computer table as well.
So one, two, three mice.
Now let's move on to a different kind of irregular plural. These are the words which, and I'll
just write it up here, 'they look like plurals - but they're not!' And in the picture you
can see 'news' on the newspaper, you can see measles and mumps, you can see 'mathematics',
'economics' and so on. So I'll start up on the left here by writing 'news'. And I'll
write the complete sentence there 'the news is good'. Now notice something about the verb
after 'news', it's 'is' - it's not 'are' it's 'is'. So that's singular right? Well, the
answer to that is yes and no and I'll come back to that in the end.
In the meantime, if you want to talk about a singular news item you have to use a rather
different phrase, and here it is: 'a news item' or another one 'a news story' - both
commonly used, in fact, I'll put the second one, I'm going to put brackets around 'news'
because it's so often that journalists talk about 'a story'. Hopefully, usually true!
Right, let's move on, now I'm going to write on the other side over here 'mathematics',
and 'economics' which I got from the posters behind the picture there and I'll add 'athletics'
and 'politics'. We don't actually say 'mathematics' what we normally say is 'math' or 'maths'
but the word is actually 'mathematics'. To show they're not plural i'll write in a sentence
after the word 'politics' - 'politics is the art of the impossible', I can't remember who
said that but I think it's true. Now, what do those four words have in common? They have,
of course, '-ics'. I'll write '-ics' up there, they have '-ics' in common, they all end in
'-ics'.
Now moving on, here are two words connected with illnesses. Here's the first one: 'measles'.
Measles - when you come out in spots, not very nice! In so much is it not very nice,
it is sometimes fatal.'Measles is sometimes fatal'. Notice we say 'is'. Here's another
one - 'mumps' is not good for children and is much worse for grown-ups. So, another little
group 'diseases'. There are several illnesses.
Now on a more cheerful note, here are some games. I'll pull in the first one 'billiards',
billiards is singular. And here's another one 'dominoes' is singular. And here's another
one, I'll drag in a whole sentence this time 'darts is popular in pubs'. They're 'games'.
Now everything on this page has something in common - they look like plurals but they're
not. They're not exactly singular either but I'll come back to that. In the meantime, here's
the next screen.
We're looking at a number of different people and they all have this in common - the words
'look singular - but they aren't!', so it's the opposite to the previous screen.
I'll write the first word on the left here, you can guess what it's going to be I think
probably, 'police'. 'Police' looks singular but it isn't. 'The police' (and I'll write
the complete sentence here) 'control the highways'. Notice that 'control' doesn't have an 's'
- why not? Because the word 'police' is plural. Now if you want to talk about the police in
the singular you have to have a different phrase, here we are 'a policeman is standing
there' or, if you'd like, more than one I'll write in 'two policewomen are doing whatever
they're doing. So 'policeman' is truly singular, now if you want to talk about a singular group,
you have to talk about the 'police force', I'll write there 'the police force'. And of
'police forces' you can have more than one - you could have the 'London Police Force'
or the 'Scottish Police Force' or the 'French Police Force' so I can write here the plural
'forces'. So the word 'police' is apparently plural, but I'll come back to that at the
end.
In the meantime let's go to the right and I'll just write the word 'people' up there
but I want to put it in a sentence so I'll just write "the people were waiting" - 'were'
you noticed, not 'was'. Now if you want to talk about one person you would usually use
the name or man/woman but you could also use the word 'person' and here's an example: "One
person at a time, please". - deliberately chosen to avoid mentioning the gender, so
it's a bit formal, so I'll write the word 'formal' there. And here's an example of the
plural, which is even more formal, here we go, 'crimes committed by person or persons
unknown'. That's very formal, so formal that I'm going to write 'frozen' here. By frozen
language I mean the kind of language used in legal documents and notices.
Now to finish I want to briefly mention something I mentioned earlier - are these words singular
or plural? The short answer is that they are neither, they are 'uncountable', uncountable
or if you like they are 'mass' nouns, or they are 'non-count' nouns. We'll have a video
on that next week. But before you go you might like to test yourself.
Below your screen there's a link to a 'test yourself' page which is a PDF you can print or do on screen.
Scroll down the PDF and you'll find the answers. Thanks for watching and bye for now!