There are several nouns that have irregular plural forms.

Plurals formed in this way are sometimes called irregular plurals or mutated (or mutating) plurals.

• more than one child = children
• more than one woman = women
• more than one man = men
• more than one person = people
• more than one goose = geese
• more than one mouse = mice
• more than one barracks = barracks
• more than one deer = deer

Other irregular plural forms include the following:

Some foreign nouns retain their plural. (Note that some of them adapted the s of the English plural form!)

Nouns ending in us get a, i or the s of the English plural:

Nouns ending in um get a, i or the s of the English plural:

Nouns ending in ex or ix get ices or get the s of the English plural:

Nouns ending in is becoming es in plural:

Nouns ending in -on becoming -a:

Nouns that are always singular:

A handful of nouns appear to be plural in form but take a singular verb:

• The news is bad.
• Gymnastics is fun to watch.
• Economics/mathematics/statistics is said to be difficult.

Some nouns never take the s of the plural and are always singular:

• your luggage / baggage is so heavy
• I'd like to buy new furniture for the house
• you can find more informationin our website.

Different types of nouns

There are different types of nouns:

1. An abstract noun names an idea, event, quality, or concept (freedom, love, courage...) Concrete nouns name something recognizable through the sense (table, dog, house...)

2. Animate nouns refer to a person, animal, or other creature (man, elephant, chicken...) Aninanimate nounrefers to a material object (stone, wood, table...)

3. A collective noun describes a group of things or people as a unit (family, flock, audience...)

4. Common noun is the name of a group of similar things (table, book, window...) Proper nouns, however, refer to the name of a single person, place or thing (John, Joseph, London...)

5. Compound nouns refer to two or more nouns combined to form a single noun (sister-in-law, schoolboy, fruit juice)

6. Countable (or count) nouns have a singular and a plural form. In plural, these nouns can be used with a number- they can be counted. (friends, chairs, houses, boys...) Uncountable (or non count) nouns, however, can only be used in singular. They can't be counted. (money, bread, water, coffee...)

THERE IS - THERE ARE

We use there is and there are to say that something exists.

Positive Sentences

We use there is for singular and there are for plural.

• There isone table in the classroom.
• There are three chairs in the classroom.
• There is a spider in the bath.
• There are many people at the bus stop.

We also use There is with uncountable nouns:

• There is milk in the fridge.
• There is some sugar on the table.
• There is ice cream on your shirt.

Contractions

The contraction of there is is there's.

• There's a good song on the radio.
• There's only one chocolate left in the box.

You cannot contract there are.

• There are nine cats on the roof.
• There areonly five weeks until my birthday.

Negative Form

The negative is formed by putting not after is or are:

• There is not a horse in the field.
• There are not eight children in the school.
• There is not a tree in the garden.
• There are not two elephants in the zoo.

We almost always use contractions when speaking.

The Negative contractions are:

• There's not = There isn't
• There are not = There aren't

There aren't with ANY

When we want to indicate that a zero quantity of something exists we use there aren't any.

Questions

To form a question we place is / are in front of there.

Again we use any with plural questions or those which use uncountable nouns.

We also use there is / are in short answers.

• Is there a dog in the supermarket? - No, there isn't.
• Are thereany dogs in the park? - Yes, there are.
• Is therea security guard in the shop? - Yes, there is.
• Are there any polar bears in Antarctica? - No, there aren't.
• Is thereany ice-cream in the freezer? - Yes, there is.

How Many with Are There

If we want to find out the number of objects that exist we use How many in the following form:

How many + plural noun + are there (+ complement).

• How manydogs are there in the park?
• How manystudents are there in your class?
• How manycountries are there in South America?
• How many Star Wars films are there?

MUCH, MANY – A LITTLE, A FEW

1. When do we use much and when many?

• much: uncountable nouns (milk, marmalade, money, time etc.)
• many: countable nouns (bottles of milk, jars of marmalade, dollars, minutes etc.)

Examples:

• How much money have you got?
• How many dollars have you got?

In informal English these questions are often answered with a lot of, lots of. There is no much difference between the two phrases.

2. When do we use a little/little and when a few/few?