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.
Before we get into that, I want to call
your attention to a new YouTube feature,
Superthanks, that allows you to give a
small donation to my channel for a specific
video. This allows me not only to feel
your support and appreciation but to know
what videos are the most valuable to YOU, so the
next time you’re watching a video that you love,
hit that Superthanks button. Proceeds will be
going towards a new camera for my channel.
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
do like the video and subscribe with
notifications. We discuss interesting
things about English, mostly about American
English pronunciation here on this channel
every week and I’d love to see you back. That’s it
and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.