EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT REGULAR PLURAL NOUNS 3 cases

Plural nouns in English. Now we do actually 
have rules for these. But there’s a trick,  

there’s a catch, there always is in English 
pronunciation. We’ll get to that.

A noun in English is made plural when we 
add an S or ES to the end of the word.  

Guess what - this is the third person conjugation 
of verbs too. So everything you learn here for  

the pronunciation plural nouns also applies to 
the 3rd person conjugation. Yay! Two for one!

For S, we add a letter and a sound. Cat becomes 
cats. Dog becomes dogs. But listen: catsssssss,  

dogzzzzzz, two different pronunciations of 
that plural S. But then with certain words,  

like ‘beach’, the plural is an -es and it’s 
an extra syllable, beaches. BEACH-iz, iz, iz.

When to use which pronunciation? And what’s 
the trick I told you about at the beginning?

Use the ‘s’ sound, like ‘cat’ becoming‘cats’, if 
the final sound of the noun is p, t, k, f, or th.  

Did you notice what all of those 
sounds have in common? p, t, k, f, th.  

They’re all unvoiced. There’s no vibration 
in my vocal cords making that happen. [ð] –  

that’s a voiced th. Th. these are all unvoiced. 
The S is also unvoiced. So is also unvoiced  

so the unvoiced S pronunciation goes 
with these unvoiced sounds.

Cats, ships, books, coughs. Now look there, 
the final letter was an H and that’s not in  

our list. But we’re talking final sounds. 
And the final sound of ‘cough’ is F. Cough,  

coughs. “There were quite a few coughs 
in the audience, but I think we got a  

good recording of the concert.” And finally, 
the unvoiced TH, like in ‘paths’. Paths.

THS is a tricky combination and one that I 
get questions about quite a bit. Ths, ths.  

Tongue tip just out to tongue tip just in. For 
the S the tongue tip can be pointing down or up, I  

find it feels more natural to point down, ths,ths. 
One of the most common plural nouns THS ending is  

months, and good news, it has a shortcut. Instead 
of saying ‘months’, most native speakers change  

that TH to a T and say ‘months’. He’s six months 
old. “Months”. A little easier than ths.

Cough is a noun or a verb. 
Third person conjugation,  

coughs. He coughs a lot. Remember, the third 
person conjugation follows the same rule.  

So since the verb ends in F, this 
S is unvoiced sss. Coughs.

One final thing to say about case 1: Next 
words. If the next word begins with an S,  

you’re just making 1 S sound to link 
there. For example, the students sit here.  

Students sit, students sit. 1 S 
to link to connect those words.

If the next word begins with a Z, that 
beginning sound takes over the plural  

and we more or less drop the S sound. For 
example, the cats zipped around the house. Cats  

zipped become ‘cazipped’, just 
link with the 1 z sound.

Ok, case 1, done. Case 2 is where it 
gets a little tricky with our habits.  

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In case two, the final sound 
is any vowel or diphthong,  

or one of these consonants, and that 
plural is pronounced as a Z sound.

So let’s take ‘chairs’ as our example, “chairz.” 
Ending sound is a Z. Do you hear that? The  

vocal cords vibrate, making the difference 
between Z and S. I’ll alternate for you:

sss,zzz, sss,zzz sss,zzz.

So this ending here, in case 
2 is a Z, zzz. Chairzzz.  

Except we don’t actually pronounce it that 
way. It’s written in IPA with the Z sound,  

and yet it’s not really a Z sound. Let’s explore. 
I’m using a voice recording app on my phone.  

I’ve recorded the word ‘chair’ with a clear, 
strong Z sound, chairzz, also a clear, strong  

S sound, chairss. Both sound unnatural, then 
I’ve recorded it the way we say it: chairs.

Now what we see here, these blue lines,  

are the pitch. The note of the vibration of my 
vocal cords. When a sound is unvoiced like sssss,  

you don’t see any blue line. But if we see 
a blue line, it’s voiced, it’s zzz, a z.

This first one here is me saying ‘chairz’ 
with an exaggerated z sound, zz,zz,  

a really strong clear z. Let’s listen.

And if I bring my cursor here to the very end of  

that line of pitch right here and I play it, 
you’ll see that there’s not really any sound.  

So there’s no S there ending. Now, in this 
next one I really exaggerated the S sound.

Chairs

So we would not say it that really 
strongly. Let me bring the cursor back here  

to the end of the vocal vibration 
and let’s see, do we hear an S?

Definitely, we hear a clear S.

So, when I exaggerate the S,  

we can definitely hear it and see 
that there is no vocal cord vibration.

Okay now, the 3rd time I’ve recorded 
me saying chairs the way that it’s  

more normal in conversational 
to say it, let’s listen.

So the question is: Does that ending sound have 
a Z quality or is it an S quality? Do we have  

an S sound with no voice in it? Let’s see.

Yeah we do. It’s super fast though 
isn’t it? It’s not sss. That was s,s,s.  

So fast so weak but definitely not a z, that’s an 
s, a short quick S. That’s the weak ending Z.

So the way we actually pronounce case 2, S 
as [z] sound, is really an S, but a weak S,  

not a full S. Case 1, plurals 
are pronounced as an S,  

you make a clear S. Case 2, plurals are pronounced 
as a Z, but you make a WEAK S. Confusing,  

but true. The voiced ending Z sound is 
weak. So weak that it sounds like a weak S.  

By making the S really weak, it sounds like 
a Z in these endings. I know. It’s crazy.

Let me just say a few of these plurals 
for you. Notice you’re not hearing zzz,  

a strong Z or Ss, a strong S.

Windows.

Foods.

Rooms.

The ending is: [weak s] A very 
weak without much hearing it.

So where does that leave us with case 3? We’ll 
get to that in a second, but first a general  

note on weak ending sounds. This strong/weak 
thing is true of all paired ending consonants.  

Let’s take for example the word ‘judge’. 
It begins and ends ends in the J sound. JJ.  

The first one is clear, the second 
one isn’t because it’s an ending J.

Jj. Judge. Jj. This ending is weak 
especially if we compare it with the CH  

sound, the match. CH. CH. So the ending of 
judge isn’t Jj and it’s not CH. It’s ch,ch.  

A really weak version of the 
unvoiced sound the CH. Judge.

Let’s talk about linking it to another word.

If the next word after these 
plurals begins with a Z,  

we link with one Z sound and it 
does sound like a full clear Z.

For example, “the cars 
zipped along” carzzzzzipped.  

Strong Z because it also begins 
the next word. Cars zipped,  

the cars zipped along. So there is no feel 
of an S in the plural ending here, just Z.

But, if the next word begins with an S, 
then you just hear a single S sound to link,  

no Z. For example, “the cars stopped.” 
Carsssssstopped. Just an S sound.

Okay, Case: 3 for plural noun pronunciation. 
In case 3, we don’t just add a sound,  

we add a syllable. It’s unstressed, and it’s 
IH, Z. You already know what I’m going to say  

about that ending Z. It’s a weak ending 
sound, so it’s actually more like weak  

S, without, zzzz, that vibration in 
the vocal cords. This ending is ss, ss.

This is the plural noun pronunciation 
if the final sound of the noun is S,  

like “base”. Base becomes bases.

We need to cover all our bases.

Bases, iz, iz, weak ending sound. This is so 
similar yet different from the word ‘basis’. There  

the ending sound is the S sound, it’s a little 
stronger. Basis. So we have bases and basis.

To make things extra confusing, 
the plural of ‘basis’ is this word,  

spelled like the plural of ‘base’, but pronounced 
with an EE vowel in the second syllable, baseez.  

So the plural of ‘base’ is ‘bases’, and the 
plural of ‘basis’ is ‘bases’, spelled the same as  

‘bases’ but pronounced slightly 
differently. Oh goodness.

Our other ending sounds for case 
3 are zz, sh, zh, ch, and jj.  

So Rose, ending with a Z sound, becomes 
roses. Two syllables. Rash becomes  

rashes. Garage becomes garages. Batch 
becomes batches, and judge becomes judges.

Just like in case 2, if we link into a 
Z it sounds like a Z. The judges zoned  

out during the boring presentation. Judges 
zoned, Here we hear the Z, zz. Judges zoned.  

Judges zoned. If these words link into a word that 
begins with an S, we hear an S. Judges saw. Judges  

saw The judges saw everything.
There they are. Your three cases for pronouncing  

plural nouns. Case 1, the noun ends in one 
of these sounds, the plural is pronounced as an S.

Case 2, the noun ends in one of these 
sounds, the plural is pronounced as a S which  

is really more like a weak Z. Case 
three, the noun ends in one of these  

sounds and we add ‘iz’ at the end of the word, 
another syllable, again with the weak ending Z  

sounding like a weak S. Practicing 
the pronunciation of plural nouns,  

what could be more fun? Nothing, I think.   

Thank you so much for joining me here and please

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