Is "There are ten sheeps in the field" correct?
There are ten sheep in a field. Divya writes "There are ten sheeps in the field", thinking every plural must look different from its singular. Her grandfather says the word does not change at all here. Who is right?
Who do you think is right? Pick one.
The answer: Her grandfather is right, it stays "sheep"
Why
Divya's expectation that a plural should visibly change from its singular is true for the overwhelming majority of English nouns — cat/cats, dog/dogs. A small set of words, though, use the EXACT SAME form for both singular and plural, with no change at all: one sheep, two sheep; one fish, two fish (in most everyday use); one deer, two deer. These are called zero-plural nouns, and "one sheeps" or "ten sheeps" is never correct, however tempting it feels to add the usual "-s". English has no single rule that predicts which nouns fall into this small group — like the irregular plurals, they simply have to be learned as exceptions to the general "add -s" pattern. Test: say "I saw one sheep and then five more sheep" out loud — the word doesn't need to change to show that the amount changed, because the surrounding numbers already tell you that. Her grandfather is right: "sheep" stays exactly the same in the plural, one more small, unpredictable exception in a language full of them.
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