When do we pluralize nouns in the English language?
Although most singular nouns are made plural by adding an “s” at the end of the word, several different rules apply to complicate matters.
Irregular nouns don’t follow the same rules, which means they require memorization or reference materials for when you cannot remember them.
Since we use nouns frequently, knowing how to recognize them and use them with plurals appropriately creates more accuracy when speaking or writing.
The spelling of a plural depends on how the noun ends. When using “weekend” as an example, it would add an “s” to pluralize it, but this noun is unique in its structure.
Have a Nice Weekend or Have a Nice Weekends?
When speaking in English, the “s” for a pluralization only occurs when talking about multiple items. In reference to a “weekend,” you only have one event despite the connection involving two or more separate days. That’s why the phrase should be, “Have a nice weekend,” to be grammatically correct.
A reference to a weekend is not plural.
Although people can define a weekend in whatever way they prefer, the standardized reference describes Saturday and Sunday together as a singular time block.
That’s because weekdays involve the other five days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Someone could ask the question, “How were your weekdays?” It would be a grammatically correct way to talk about those five individual days. In comparison, a more precise way to request this information would be to say, “How was your week?” The second option singularizes the collection.
Most people work on the five weekdays if they have traditional employment. Their company gives them two whole days off on Saturday and Sunday. This cycle repeats unless the worker takes a vacation or needs to miss time because of an illness or injury.
If you refer to one weekend, such as in “have a nice weekend,” there is no plural “s” added to it because the two days are a single time block.
The only time you would pluralize “weekend” is if you refer to more than one of them. You might say, “There are five weekends in June this year.”
It doesn’t matter that there are two days for the weekend because the term “weekend” refers to them together.
◼️ When Would I Say, “Have a Nice Weekends?”
You would never say the phrase, “Have a nice weekends.”
That phrase is grammatically incorrect, even if you’re talking about multiple weekends, because you’re using the singular “a” in the grouping
It would be the same as comparing “have a nice day” vs. “have a nice days.”
When you want to refer to multiple weekends when speaking with someone, you must change the entire sentence structure from singular to plural.
That’s why you would wish someone to “have some nice weekends” or “have a couple of nice weekends” to create pluralization.
How Do I Know What to Use When Pluralizing a Word?
When you have a regular singular noun, you pluralize it with a single “s.” You would have one cat or two cats.
You can have one house or two houses.
That means you can have one weekend or two weekends. The primary difference with this option compared to the others is that “cat” and “house” are not collections.
Here are some of the other pluralization rules to follow when you start talking about multiple nouns.
1. Add “es” to singular nouns that end with a “z,” “x,” “ch,” “sh,” “ss,” or “s.”
You could say that you’re going to visit the marsh today. If you were visiting two or more during the trip, you would be traveling to see some “marshes.”
I might eat lunch each day at the same time. If I wanted to pack this meal on the weekend to be ready for my work responsibilities for the rest of the week, I’d be making my “lunches.”
2. Singular nouns that end in “z” or “s” sometimes require the “es” and doubling.
When the word you want to pluralize has a short vowel in front of a “z” or “s,” you need to double the consonant before adding the “es” to spell it correctly.
The two words that people usually get wrong with this rule are “gas” and “bus.” It would be “gasses” and “busses.”
A school bus is different. You would have school “buses” to distinguish the noun from the “busses” verb that refers to cleaning.
3. Some nouns that end in “f” or “fe” change to “ve” for pluralizing.
Some words, such as wife or wolf, get altered to create a plural meaning. You would switch “wife” to “wives” or “wolf” to “wolves.”
Not every word with this structure follows that rule. Some examples include “roofs,” “chefs,” and “beliefs.”
4. When the noun ends with a “y” and the letter before it is a consonant, it becomes “ies.”
If your singular noun ends with a “y” and a consonant comes before the final letter, it gets altered to end in “ies” instead. “City” vs. “cities” is a great example of this grammatical and spelling rule.
When the noun that ends in “y” has a vowel in front of it, you simply add the “s” as you would with “weekend” vs. “weekends.”
That means you would have rays, boys, or journeys.
5. If the noun ends with an “o,” you typically add “es.”
Most words that end with an “o” will usually need to have “es” added to them to make them plural. You have “tomatoes” and “potatoes” to serve as examples of this rule.
Some nouns have exceptions, such as “piano” vs. “pianos.”
A few words that end with “o” can use both. The best example is “volcanos” or “volcanoes” since both are considered acceptable.
Are You Ready to Have a Nice Weekend?
By remembering that weekend is a singular collection, despite being a group of days, you’ll avoid saying, “Have a nice weekends” to someone when you meet them. Virtually all collections get referenced as an individualized noun unless speaking about multiple instances of the same thing.
Although each weekend has two days to enjoy, you’ll get four or five weekends each month. That makes it easier to remember this rule.
