Part Three - Bianca's Leafs
While driving to the beach this past year, I was aghast when I saw this billboard for Bianca's Tea Leafs.
Stay tuned to find out why...
In English there are rules. This is true for most things in life. Get used to it; stop complaining.
When we're talking about creating plural nouns, the general rule is to add an 's'.
The plural of cat is cats. The plural of tree is trees. The plural of flower is flowers. Get it? Good.
So what's the plural of leaf?
If you, like Bianca, think the answer is leafs...
You're wrong!
One of the reasons English is such a hard language to learn is because it so often breaks the rules. (Why? The short, simple answer to this is because we've borrowed words from so many other languages and with those borrowed words come borrowed grammar.)
Words that end with an 'f' of 'fe' are rule-breakers. The rule for those words is to drop the 'f' or 'fe' and change it to 'ves'.
Bianca's billboard should say, "BIANCA'S TEA LEAVES."
Like most rules in the English language, there are exceptions to this rule (safe, safes; chief, chiefs; dwarf, dwarfs... and so on). For a more comprehensive list of plural nouns and the rule breakers, check out Enchanted Learning.
You're wrong!
One of the reasons English is such a hard language to learn is because it so often breaks the rules. (Why? The short, simple answer to this is because we've borrowed words from so many other languages and with those borrowed words come borrowed grammar.)
Words that end with an 'f' of 'fe' are rule-breakers. The rule for those words is to drop the 'f' or 'fe' and change it to 'ves'.
Bianca's billboard should say, "BIANCA'S TEA LEAVES."
Like most rules in the English language, there are exceptions to this rule (safe, safes; chief, chiefs; dwarf, dwarfs... and so on). For a more comprehensive list of plural nouns and the rule breakers, check out Enchanted Learning.
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