Weekly English Words with Alisha Words with Strange Plural Forms
Welcome back to Weekly Words. I’m Alisha, and this week we are going to do words with
strange plural forms. This is good practice, I bet. Let’s start. Yeah.
“Antenna.” The plural form of “antenna”
is “antennae.” I don’t think I would
say “antennae.” “Antennae.” I think
I would probably actually just say “antennas.”
An “antenna” on an old TV set, for example, would be… Would kind of look like this.
We would call it “bunny ears,” where you
had to adjust the bunny ears. “We had to
adjust the antennae to make the signal on
your TV come in more clearly.” Bugs! They
have “antennae” from their heads.
The next word is “millenium.” The plural
is “millennia.” A “millenium” is a
“period of a thousand years.” A thousand
years is a “millenium.” A series of thousands
of years would be called “millenia.” You
might say, “Many millennia have passed since
the Earth was formed.”
“Cactus” is the next word. A “cactus”
is a plant… These are the arms of the “cactus.”
I couldn’t make the trunk of the cactus.
Wow. You can put a picture on the screen instead
of my amazing cactus. “Cactus.” The plural of “cactus” is “cacti” or “cactuses.”
I think I’m more inclined to say “cacti.”
So when you go to the desert, you might say,
“Keep an eye out for cacti. If you step
on one it could really hurt you.”
The next one is an interesting one. I don’t
think I’ve ever used this word in the singular.
Like, if you have a swimming pool or if you’ve seen a pond or whatever, it’s that green,
sort of scummy stuff that accumulates on top of it or on the sides of your pool if you
haven’t cleaned it in a while. “Algae.”
Bacterias and things that like to live in
the water. There’s a singular form, and
I’m looking at it for the first time. I
don’t know how… “Alga.” To use the
plural then, you would say, “I need to clean
my pool. There’s a lot of algae in it.”
Yeah.
Next is “ox.” “Ox.” Uh, the plural
of “ox” is “oxen.” These animals used
to be used for farming. I don’t know that
they are very much anymore. I don’t have
much personal experience with farming. But they look like really, really big cows with
huge horns. Huge horns. Yeah.
Okay. Next is, the end. Uh… Plural. Words
that have weird plural forms. So please keep
them in mind when you are trying to use them in conversation and use the correct form of
the plural. Thank you for joining us again
this week for Weekly Words. Next time we will
see you for more Weekly Words. That was weird. We’ll see you next week for more fun information.
Take care. Bye.