One penny, twenty pence

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Most plurals in English are formed by adding –s or –es to a singular noun as in songs, sandwiches, and glasses. Many of these forms, however, show irregular spellings. Leaf, life and half, for instance, become leaves, lives and halves. The different endings in holidays and dictionaries are explained by a simple rule – whether there is a vowel or a consonant before the final –y in the singular. But it isn’t so easy to see why the plural forms of piano and tomato are, respectively, pianos and tomatoes.

There are also other kinds of irregularities, some of which are found in everyday words like woman-women, man-men, and child-children. Similarly, mice, feet and teeth are the plural forms of mouse, foot and tooth. Pence is the plural of penny – usually referring to sums of money, while the regular form pennies tends to be used to name one-penny coins. And to talk about more than one person, we generally use the term people.



Some words, on the other hand, remain unchanged. Unless we’re talking about different species, we count fish – and, in case we’re trying to fall asleep, sheep.


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