Introduction to singular and plural nouns | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

- Hello grammarians!

Let's talk about singular
and plural nouns.

Nouns, as we discussed previously,

are a type of word.

They are a part of speech.

A noun is any word that is a person,

a place,

a thing,

or an idea.

In English, we can figure
out just by looking at a noun

whether or not there is one of something,

whether it's a singular,

or whether or not there is
more than one of something.

There's an easy way to
tell the difference between

singular and plural.

If you write the words down,

singular contains the word single.

Single, means there's only one of it.

Plural is maybe a little bit less obvious,

but it comes to us from Latin.

It comes to us from this word plus,

which means more,

which you might recognize

plus, as we call it in
English, from mathematics,

from arithmetic.

We usually says it looks
like this little plus symbol.

So, whenever you think,
whenever you see plural,

just think more; just think plus.

There is more than one.

Singular is one thing.

Plural, more than one
thing; there is more.

Let's go through it.

Let's do some examples.

I'll show you how you make
the plural in English,

how you indicate using your language

that there is more than one thing.

So let's just throw out a couple of words.

Dog,

cat,

dinosaur,

and whale.

All you need to do to make
it plural is very simply

just take an s and you add
it onto the end like so.

Dogs, cats,

dinosaurs, whales.

If you want to make something plural,

think about plus, more.

All you have to do is add an s

like that: add an s.

This is what we call the regular plural.

This is the regular plural.

What that means is it obeys this one rule.

All you have to do to say
that there's more than one dog

is throw on an s,

and we're lucky because most English nouns

behave that way.

Most nouns are regular.

However, here's the bad news.

There are some irregular plurals.

They are not regular,

thus irregular, not.

Now we have words like leaf,

child, and fungus,

which is like a mushroom,

mouse,

and sheep.

How would you, you know you
can't just add an s to these?

That's unfortunately not how
these nouns work in English.

You can't say leafs, childs, and funguses,

and mouses, and sheeps.

This is how you do it.

Each one of these words
corresponds to a class of words

that has its own unique
pluralization standards.

So, leaf becomes leaves.

Child becomes children.

Fungus becomes fungi.

Mouse becomes mice.

And sheep stays sheep,

believe it or not.

These are the irregular plurals,

and we'll be covering each of
these in turn in later videos,

but for now I just want you to
focus on the regular plural,

which again we can sum up in this way.

All you have to do is add an s.

Here's a good example, right?

We have one elephant here.

Down here we have two elephants.

The only difference between
this word and this word

is that this one has
an s on the end of it.

So if we wanted to say that
this elephant here was not,

in fact, one elephant,
and was two elephants,

all we have to do is add an s,

changing it from singular to plural.

Remember, plural comes from plus.

Add an s.

So one elephant becomes

two elephants.

(humming)

World's fastest elephant drawing, go!

(humming)

It's kind of an elephant monkey,

but you get the vague idea.

If you're ever in need
of more than one thing,

for the regular plural, just add an s.

You can learn anything.

David, out!