Plural Nouns Pronunciation - /s/ /z/ or /iz/? (pronounce PERFECTLY every time!) (+ Free PDF & Quiz)

- Hello, lovely students,

and welcome back to "English With Lucy."

Today, I've got a pronunciation video for you,

and we are also going to be talking about spelling.

Today's topic is Plural Nouns.

And that might seem quite simple

or quite easy to some of you,

but trust me, lots of people struggle with this.

Why do we say "one book," but "two books," with a 's' sound?

Yet, we say "one dog," "two dogs," with a 'z' sound.

To make things even more complicated,

we say "one house," "two houses,"

with an 'iz' sound.

Plural nouns are not as simple as you think,

but I can definitely simplify them for you today.

I'm going to cover all of the spelling

and pronunciation rules with you.

And as always, there is a free PDF

that goes with this lesson.

It contains everything that we are going to cover today.

And importantly, it has a quiz.

It's totally free to download.

If you'd like to download this PDF,

just click on the link in the description box,

you enter your name and your email address,

you sign up for my mailing list,

and the PDF will arrive directly in your inbox.

After that, you will automatically receive

all of my free weekly lesson PDFs

along with all my news, course updates, and offers.

It's a free service, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

One other thing,

if you are interested in British English pronunciation,

more specifically, learning my accent,

the modern RP accent,

then I am running a special offer

on my pronunciation course.

In this course, we go through every single phoneme

and how to pronounce it,

plus loads of other lessons,

it really is an excellent course.

If you'd like to discover that special offer,

just click on the link in the description box,

and you'll see it, it's all there for you.

Right, let's get started with this pronunciation

and spelling lesson.

So plural nouns are the form that tells us

that there is more than one of something.

With regular nouns, we simply add an s to make them plural.

For example, one book, two books,

one dog, two dogs,

one house, two houses.

Now, as I said at the beginning of this video,

there are three different ways

to pronounce the s at the end of regular nouns.

We have 's' as in books,

'z' as in dogs,

and 'iz' as in houses.

We're going to talk about those three sounds

in detail today.

And I'm going to teach you how to decide which one to use.

But first,

I want to mention the spelling of irregular nouns,

irregular plural nouns.

And they're not made by just adding an s.

You sometimes need to add a letter or two

or completely change the spelling.

Let me give you some examples,

one baby, two babies,

one knife, two knives,

one church, two churches.

I'll go into more detail about these spelling changes

in a moment.

But first, let's talk about the pronunciation

of 's' at the end of plural nouns, regular plural nouns.

Listen to the sound 's.'

It's like the sound a snake makes.

It's completely voiceless.

So if you put your hand on your voice box here,

and you say 's,' you shouldn't feel a vibration.

That's a really good way to check

if a sound is voiced or unvoiced or voiced and voiceless.

When you say a voiced sound like, "Mmm," or "Whh,"

if you put your hand on your throat,

you'll feel that it vibrates.

"Mmm," "Whh," mine certainly did,

I hope yours did too.

We use the sound 's'

if the sound that comes before the s ending

is 'f,' 'k,' 'p,' 't,' or 'h.'

So five sounds there,

'f,' 'k,' 'p,' 't,' or 'h.'

So now you know when to use the 's' sound in a plural,

let's look at some examples.

We have, "belief," "beliefs."

If you try and say that with a 'z' sound

instead of a 's' sound,

"beliefz," it sounds weird.

And it's also more difficult.

So do yourself a favour,

'cause not many parts of English are logical and easy,

but this part is I think.

You also have "book," "books,"

"cup," "cups,"

"bat," "bats,"

"moth," "moths."

Try saying any of those with a 'z' sound,

and it'll cost you more energy.

Let's move onto the 'z' sound and when to use it.

Previous sound was like a snake, 's'.

This one is like a bee, 'z,' voiced. (chuckling)

So if you put your hand on your throat again, 'z,'

you should feel a vibration.

Now, the 'z' sound is far more common,

and we use it after many more sounds.

We use it after the 'b' sound, the 'd' sound,

'g,' 'l,' 'm,' 'n,' 'n.'

I know that 'n' sound is quite hard to pronounce.

'N' at the front, 'n' in the middle, 'n' in the back.

I cover all of this in the pronunciation course.

Again, you can click on the link in the description box

to claim that special offer.

'R,' 'vh,' 'v,' or vowel sounds.

All of these are voiced.

So again, we match them up with the voiced 'z' sound.

Let's see some examples.

We have "crab," "crabs,"

"bed," "beds,"

"dog," "dogs,"

"hill," "hills,"

"dream," "dreams,"

"pen," "pens,"

"king," "kings,"

"clothe," "clothes,"

"glove," "gloves,"

"bee," "bees,"

"boy," "boys,"

"shoe," "shoes."

So we've gone through quite a lot already,

but we're not done.

We're not done with the 'z' sound yet.

Here are spelling changes.

I said earlier that some words change their spelling

when we make them plural.

"Baby," "babies," "knife," "knives."

Let's look at "baby-babies" first.

To make the word baby plural,

we remove the y and we add ies.

We do this when the letter before the y is a consonant,

like the b in baby.

Some other examples, "puppy," "puppies,"

"lady," "ladies," "blueberry," "blueberries."

When a word ends in ies, that 'z' sound is voiced

even when the sound that comes before it is unvoiced,

like with puppies, 'p' is unvoiced,

but because it's followed by ies, we say 'iz.'

Another example, "ability," "abilities."

Now, let's talk about "knife" and "knives."

You can see, that to make the word knife a plural,

we take away the f and the e, and we replace it with ves.

This often happens when a noun ends in f or fe.

Let's take a look at some more examples.

We have "loaf," "loaves,"

"life," "lives,"

"wolf," "wolves."

However, there are quite a few words that don't change.

Previously, we saw "belief," "beliefs."

We also have "chef," "chefs," "handcuff," "handcuffs."

English is full of exceptions.

If you're ever in doubt, take a look at the dictionary.

And the one I recommend is the Oxford Learner's Dictionary,

because more often than not,

they have the phonetic transcriptions

for both the plurals and the singulars.

That way, you can take a look at the differences.

I have one more section under the 'z' sound,

words that end in o.

When these words are made plural, they end in z,

but sometimes, we also change spelling.

For some words, we simply add the s.

For example, "piano," "pianos,"

"radio," "radios," "photo," "photos,"

but for others, we add es.

"Tomato," "tomatoes,"

"potato," "potatoes,"

"hero," "heroes."

The final word that we're looking at today

is the 'iz' sound.

And this sound is special,

because when we add it to the end of a singular word

to make it plural, it adds an extra syllable.

One of the examples I gave you earlier

was church and churches.

Can you hear the extra syllable, "iz," "churches."

Luckily, we have some rules for this extra syllable sound.

We use it when a noun ends in any one of these five sounds.

'S,' 'dz,' 'z,' 'ch,' and 'sh.'

And when we are writing the word, we either add s or es.

If the word already ends in e, we simply add s.

Here are handful of examples, we have "bridge," "bridges,"

"chance," "chances,"

"prize," "prizes."

With words that don't already end in e, we just add es.

For example, "kiss," "kisses,"

"watch," "watches,"

"box," "boxes."

Okay, I've taught you a lot of rules today,

and I think it's time to put what you've learned

into practise.

Shall we try a quiz?

I'm going to say a singular noun, and I want you to decide

how we would say the plural version of that noun.

You can either say it out loud.

You can write it in the comment section,

or you can write it down at home.

I want to know the pronunciation and the spelling.

Do we add a 's,' a 'z,' or an 'iz?'

Okay, there are 10 to go through, let's get started.

Number one, "rat," "rat."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

The answer should be "rats," with a 's' sound.

Next, we have "class," "class."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

The answer should be "classes,"

we add that extra syllable 'iz.'

Next, we have "apple," "apple."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

The answer is "apples," "apples."

'L' is voiced, so we add 'z.'

Okay, next one, number four, "beach," "beach."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

The answer is "beaches," "beaches,"

we add that extra syllable.

What about "shop," "shop?"

(countdown beeping)

The answer is "shops," "shops."

Okay, this is a tough one.

Number six is "fridge," "fridge."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

The answer is "fridges," "fridges,"

with the extra syllable.

What about, number seven, "kangaroo," "kangaroo."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music) The answer is "kangaroos,"

"kangaroos," with the 'z' sound.

What about "month," "month?"

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

It should be "months," "months."

We also have "party," "party."

(countdown beeping)

(victory music)

It's "parties," "parties,"

watch out for that spelling change.

Finally, a really hard one, we have "golf," "golf."

(countdown beeping)

It should be "golfs," "golfs."

Right, that is it for today's lesson.

I hope you enjoyed it.

And I hope you learned something.

I've taught you a lot of rules today.

Now, it's time to put them into practise.

If you'd like to review everything we've learned

in today's lesson, everything we've discussed,

and take part in the quiz, then download our free PDF.

All you've got to do is click

on the link in the description box,

enter your name and your email address,

and the PDF will come directly to your inbox.

If you're really interested in improving your pronunciation,

I'm running that special offer on my pronunciation course,

my British English Pronunciation Course,

the offer and all of its details

are in the description box as well.

Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.

I've got my Instagrams, at Lucy, my personal one,

and at EnglishwithLucy, my English Instagram.

I also have my website englishwithlucy.co.uk,

where I have a fantastic pronunciation tool,

it's a phonemic chart,

you can click on all the phonemes

and hear me pronounce those phonemes

and words that contain those phonemes.

I also have my vlogging channel, Lucy Bella,

where you can follow us and our lives here

in the English countryside.

But importantly, all of the blogs are fully subtitled,

so that you can use them for listening practise

and for expanding your vocabulary.

I hope to see you for another lesson very, very soon.

We're going to talk about those 3000 data.

Okay, far more, far more vows.

Bears, sorry. (laughing)

Knife, it's knife.

Oh, I've done that again.

Yes.

'S,' 'jh,' 'yh,' sorry.

'S,' 'ch,' 'z,' 'ch,'

this is really hard to say.

(indistinct) apologising to you all the time.

I'm sorry for saying sorry so much.

'Z.' (laughing)

(ambient music)