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.