Everyday Grammar: Irregular Plurals

- Kaveh: This is everyday grammar. I'm Kaveh.
- Lucija: And I'm Lucija. Today we're talking about irregular plurals.

- Kaveh: What? I thought we were gonna talk about the new Pixar movie featured in our new program English at the Movies.
- Lucija: No, Kaveh, this is Everyday Grammar, remember?

- Kaveh: Oh, so what's the topic again? Maybe I can help?
- Lucija: We are talking about irregular plurals. As you know, most plurals in English just follow the "add an s" rule.
One book - two books.

- Kaveh: But why is it one child - two children
- Lucija: As you can see, a few nouns follow different rules for making plurals.

- Kaveh: Yeah, but why
- Lucija: Well, the answer is in our history.

The English language has borrowed words from many languages. And a few of these borrowed words have kept the plural form used in the original language.
For examples, osme of our irregular plurals come from German:
man - men
woman - women
goose - geese
Some come from Old English:
child - children
ox - oxen
And others come from Greek and Latin:
datum - data
medium - media

- Kaveh: That's really interesting. I'm starting to like these irregular plurals.
- Lucija: And that's everyday grammar.