How to make nouns plural in French

We use the plural form of a word when we are referring to more than one of the noun in question. For instance, one car - une voiture - is singular, but if we want to talk about two, three, four or more car, we would have to use the plural form of the word - cars in English, or voitures in French.

In most cases, we simply need to add an -s to a singular noun to make it plural.

Chien - chiens (dog)

Arbre - arbres (tree)

Homme - hommes (man)

If a noun ends in -eau or -eu in the singular, we need to add an -x to make it plural. In the case of words that end -al in the singular, the suffix changes from -al to -aux in the plural. This topic is covered in more detail in Lesson 18 of the Complete French Course.

Tableau - tableaux (table)

Jeu - jeux (game)

Cheval - chevaux (horse)

If a noun already ends in -s, -x or -z in the singular, then the form doesn’t change in the plural.

Pays - pays (country)

Prix - prix (price)

Nez - nez (nose)

Remember that -s, -x and -z are all silent when used to form a plural, and don’t alter the pronunciation of the word - unless the next word happens to begin with a vowel.

If you are using a definite article with the noun, the article will also need to change form. The plural for both masculine and feminine articles is ‘les’.

La chèvre - les chèvres (goats)

Le médecin - les médecins (doctors)

L'idée - Les idées (ideas)

When describing plural nouns, adjectives also need to change their form. See Lesson 18 of the Complete French Course for more information.

Compound nouns are nouns made up of two or more words, generally connected by a hyphen. In most cases, both parts of the compound noun will be changed to their plural form if the first word is an adjective and the second word is a noun

Le beau-frère – les beaux-frères (brothers-in-law)

If the first word is a verb, adverb or preposition, however, the form does not change, and only the part of the compound that is a noun is changed to a plural form:

L'arrière-pensée - les arrière-pensées (ulterior motive)

If you would like to practise your plurals, take our French plurals quiz on YouTube. How many can you guess right?