History Main / PerplexingPlurals

** When Lord Rust is looking at the map of Klatch in the WarRoom in ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'':

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Post Office Diary'', a public statement by the Post Office apologising for the fact some mail has been defecated upon by mongooses (which were deliberately placed in the post boxes to kill the snakes, which were deliberately placed there to eat the toads...) is followed by one saying that they've been following the mongooses/mongeese debate in the ''Ankh-Morpork Times'' with interest, but don't feel it's really the point.

* In the ''Series/SurgicalSpirit'' episode "The Locum", one character claims that the plural of locum is "loca". Shelia counters this with "museums", "crysanthemums" and "dum-dums".

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Post Office Diary'', a public statement by the Post Office apologising for the fact some mail has been defecated upon by mongooses (which were deliberately placed in the post boxes to eat the snakes, which were deliberately placed there to eat the toads...) is followed by one saying that they've been following the mongooses/mongeese debate in the ''Ankh-Morpork Times'' with interest, but don't feel it's really the point.

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Post Office Diary'', a public statement by the Post Office apologising for the fact some mail has been defecated upon by mongooses (which were deliberately placed in the boxes to eat the snakes, which were deliberately placed there to eat the toads...) is followed by one saying that they've been following the mongooses/mongeese debate in the ''Ankh-Morpork Times'' with interest, but don't feel it's really the point.

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Post Office Diary'', a public statement by the Post Office apologising for the fact some mail has been defecated upon by mongooses (which were deliberately placed in the boxes to eat the snake, which were deliberately placed there to eat the toads...) is followed by one saying that they've been following the mongooses/mongeese debate in the ''Ankh-Morpork Times'' with interest, but don't feel it's really the point.

* Hacker jargon plays with this a lot; one of the more prominent examples is the old Digital VAX minicomputer. Although not completely universal, the plural [=VAXen=] is common.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' tends to have a lot of fun with plurals, with "box" becoming "[[Creator/BrianRegan boxen]]", "kiwi" becoming "kiwus", "fruit basket" becoming [[Manga/FruitsBasket "fruits basket"]], and "liar's pants" becoming [[TheLordOfTheRings "liar's pantses, precious"]]. Items which you can only legitimately have one of tend to have plurals calling NoFairCheating; for example, the plural of "Staff of Ed" is "Staves of Ed, you dirty exploiter you".

* While never mentioned in-universe, there are occasional [[EditWar Edit Wars]] on the ''Franchise/{{Resident Evil}}'' wiki about the plural of "Cerberus". Since "Cerberus" is the Latin form of the Greek "Kerberos", the Latin plural "Cerberi" is probably correct. Since the word is being used as an English word here, some people (and dictionary.com) might say "Cerberuses" is also acceptable. [[note]]Apparently, the plural of the Greek "Kerberos" is "Kerberoi".[[/note]]

* In here instead of in "Video Games" as it is never mentioned in-universe: there are occasional [[EditWar Edit Wars]] on the ''VideoGame/{{Resident Evil}}'' wiki about the plural of "Cerberus". Since "Cerberus" is the Latin form of the Greek "Kerberos", the Latin plural "Cerberi" is probably correct. Since the word is being used as an English word here, some people (and dictionary.com) might say "Cerberuses" is also acceptable. Apparently, the plural of the Greek "Kerberos" is "Kerberoi".

* The plural form of ''dwarf'' [[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000293.html has been subject to some debate]]. Until the early to mid-twentieth century, ''dwarfs'' was more commonly used in most contexts. Then Creator/JRRTolkien set a precedent within the {{fantasy}} genre by referring to his dwarf characters as ''dwarves''. Since then, ''dwarves'' has become the standard plural for [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame the fantasy creatures that we all know and love]] (Creator/{{Disney}}, ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', and ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'') being notable exceptions). On the other hand, ''dwarfs'' is still used within scientific contexts in RealLife. For example, dwarf stars and small organisms are referred to as dwarfs -- although when talking about humans with dwarfism, ''little people'' is considered more polite nowadays.

* The plural form of ''dwarf'' [[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000293.html has been subject to some debate]]. Until the early to mid-twentieth century, ''dwarfs'' was more commonly used in most contexts. Then Creator/JRRTolkien set a precedent within the {{fantasy}} genre by referring to his dwarf characters as ''dwarves''. Since then, ''dwarves'' has become the standard plural for [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame the fantasy creatures that we all know and love]] (''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' and Creator/{{Disney}} being notable exceptions). On the other hand, ''dwarfs'' is still used within scientific contexts in RealLife. For example, dwarf stars and small organisms are referred to as dwarfs -- although when talking about humans with dwarfism, ''little people'' is considered more polite nowadays.

2. Unexplainable Phenomenons. Phenomenatrices. Phenomenice. Things, ye ken well what I mean.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' Drakken builds a machine that drains a lake, and he comments on the machine not filtering out all the "fishes". This launches an argument between him and Shego about what the plural of fish is. Shego tells him that both fishes and fish are correct plurals for the word.

* Utterly and completely [[DefiedTrope defied]] in Finnish, where the standard Finnish grammar is consistently enforced even among loanwords. This is even considered to apply to trademarked names, thus even if a made-up word isn't supposed to have a plural form it does have one even in official Finnish translations (e.g. [[Franchise/StarWars "jedit", "sithit"]][[note]] Also, certain nouns that are capitalised in English are not in Finnish, such as nationalities ('[[UsefulNotes/{{Norway}} norjalainen]]') or members of religious groups ('[[UsefulNotes/OrthodoxChristianity ortodoksi]]'). Both the Jedi and the Sith are considered to belong to the latter category.[[/note]] or [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} "Pikachut"]].

* Utterly and completely [[DefiedTrope defied]] in Finnish, where the standard Finnish grammar is consistently enforced even among loanwords. This is even considered to apply to trademarked names, thus even if a made-up word isn't supposed to have a plural form it does have one even in official Finnish translations (e.g. [[Franchise/StarWars "jedit", "sithit"]][[note]] Also, certain nouns that are capitalised in English are not in Finnish, such as nationalities ('[[UsefulNotes/{{Norway}} norjalainen]]') or members of religious groups ('[[UsefulNotes/OrtodoxChristianity ortodoksi]]'). Both the Jedi and the Sith are considered to belong to the latter category.[[/note]] or [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} "Pikachut"]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' episode "Greece Lightning", the narrator of an educational filmstrip is unsure how to refer to [[EverythingsBetterWithPlatypus platypi]]. Platypuses. Platypeople? Early on the episode, Major Monogram is just as confused and expresses it [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike the same way the narrator does]].

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' averts this by making the plural name of all Pokémon species, as well as "Pokémon" itself[[note]]despite being an abbreviation of "Pocket Monsters"[[/note]], unchanged from the singular versions. Not that this stops some people from referring to [[MemeticMutation "Pokémons" or "Pokeymans"]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'' has nearly every race use the same word for their singlar and plural forms. For instace, the singular of [[HumanAliens Homs]] is still Homs; while the plurals for the [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter Nopon]] and [[OurElvesAreBetter High Entia]] are the same. Only the extinct Giants have their singular form be the more obvious Giant.

* Plural forms in Arabic are highly irregular. Rather than simply adding a suffix to the singular form like English, a majority of Arabic nouns become plural by changing their internal form entirely. Attempts to quantify the Arabic system of "broken plurals" (as they are called) into a teachable system produces ''dozens'' of distinct patterns. In other words, practically speaking, it's almost random. While not too much of a problem for native speakers, even Arabs will sometimes be at a loss what the plural form is of a more-rarely-used word.
* The Welsh language has 30 to 40 regular ways of forming plurals, depending on how you count, and no way of accurately predicting which one to use, as well as irregular plurals on top of all that. So, basically, all plurals are irregular and have to be learned with the singular.

TruthInTelevision. English has borrowed rather large number of plural forms from other languages, most notably Latin (alumnus/alumni, formula/formulae), Greek (phenomenon/phenomena, stigma/stigmata), French (tableau/tableaux), while also retaining plural forms from archaic English (goose/geese, ox/oxen, cow/kine [[note]]known to trivia nerds are the only word where the plural and singular forms share no common letter[[/note]]). Related to the phenomenon of "paradigmatic gapping" in RealLife, where a grammatical form that logically should exist just...doesn't.[[labelnote:case in point...]]The proverbial example in English is the verb "can", which can be used in the present or the past, but not in any other tenses. You just can't say "I will can do X", you need to use something like "will be able to" instead.[[/labelnote]]