Every language keeps its irregularities in the same place: the words it uses most. English says man/men and child/children precisely because those words are said too often to be tidied up, and Hebrew works the same way. The list below is short — about a dozen nouns — and every one of them is a word you will meet in your first week. That is not bad luck; it is the reason they are still irregular.
The list
| Singular | Plural | Gender | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| אִישׁ ish | אֲנָשִׁים anashím | m. | man · people |
| אִישָּׁה ishá | נָשִׁים nashím | f. | woman · women |
| בַּיִת báyit | בָּתִּים batím | m. | house |
| עִיר ir | עָרִים arím | f. | city |
| בֵּן ben | בָּנִים baním | m. | son |
| בַּת bat | בָּנוֹת banót | f. | daughter |
| יוֹם yom | יָמִים yamím | m. | day |
| אָב av | אָבוֹת avót | m. | father |
| אֵם em | אִימָּהוֹת imahót | f. | mother |
| אָח akh | אַחִים akhím | m. | brother |
| אָחוֹת akhót | אֲחָיוֹת akhayót | f. | sister · nurse |
| רֹאשׁ rosh | רָאשִׁים rashím | m. | head |
Read that table down the third column rather than across. Three of the twelve pairs put an ending on the noun that contradicts its gender: נשים and ערים are feminine with ־ים, and אבות is masculine with ־ות. A different oddity, בת → בנות, restores a consonant the singular had swallowed — בַּת goes back to an older bint (the Arabic cognate is still bint), with the נ assimilated into the ת. You cannot see that doubled ת in בַּת itself, because Hebrew never writes a doubling dagesh in a word's final letter; it surfaces the moment anything follows, and brings the old i back with it: בִּתִּי bití "my daughter", בִּתּוֹ bitó "his daughter". The plural simply lets the נ return as a full consonant.
That swallowed נ is worth recognising, because the same mechanism sits in plain view in the second row of the table above: the dagesh in the שׁ of אִישָּׁה is there for exactly the same reason, a נ absorbed into the letter after it. Do not let that tempt you into deriving נשים from אישה, though — it is a different נ, and the next section is about why.
אישה אחת בתור הסבירה לי איך זה עובד.
ishá akhát batór hisbíra li eikh ze ovéd
A woman in the queue explained to me how it works.
הנשים במשפחה שלי כולן מורות.
hanashím bamishpakhá shelí kulán morót
The women in my family are all teachers.
היו שם אנשים טובים שעזרו לנו עם המזוודות.
hayú sham anashím tovím she'azrú lánu im hamizvadót
There were good people there who helped us with the suitcases.
הבתים ברחוב הזה נבנו לפני שמונים שנה.
habatím barekhóv hazé nivnú lifnéi shmoním shaná
The houses on this street were built eighty years ago.
יש להם שני בנים ובת אחת.
yesh lahém shnei baním uvát akhát
They've got two sons and one daughter.
יש לי שלוש בנות, וכולן למדו באותו בית ספר.
yesh li shalósh banót, vekhulán lamdú be'otó beit séfer
I've got three daughters, and they all went to the same school.
לא ראיתי אותו כבר כמה ימים, הוא בסדר?
lo ra'íti otó kvar káma yamím, hu beséder?
I haven't seen him for a few days — is he all right?
אנשים and נשים are not built from איש and אישה at all
These two are the hardest to remember and the easiest to make sense of, because the honest answer is that they were never derived in the first place.
אנשים belongs with a different base: אֱנוֹשׁ, the elevated word for man, mortal, which also gives אנושות humanity and אנושי human. איש does have a plural of its own, אִישִׁים — the Bible uses it for plain men (נִבְזֶה וַחֲדַל אִישִׁים, Isaiah 53:3), and Modern Hebrew has kept it with a narrowed meaning: public figures, as in אישי ציבור.
נשים is older still and shared right across the Semitic family — Aramaic נְשַׁיָּא, and the Arabic plural nisāʾ, whose root is not the one behind אישה. Hebrew dictionaries say so outright: אישה and נשים do not go back to a common root. So the pair is a singular and a plural that were never relatives, doing duty for one another for three thousand years — and Aramaic runs the identical mismatch, its singular being אִתְּתָא. English has its own version in person and people.
The ending is not the gender
This is the part that actually costs you marks, because a plural noun rarely stands alone. Adjectives, verbs and numerals all agree with the noun's gender, and the gender is a fixed property of the word — not a reading of its ending.
| Noun | Looks | Is | So you say |
|---|---|---|---|
| נשים | masculine (־ים) | feminine | נָשִׁים חֲכָמוֹת · שָׁלוֹשׁ נָשִׁים |
| אנשים | masculine | masculine | אֲנָשִׁים טוֹבִים · שְׁלוֹשָׁה אֲנָשִׁים |
| אבות | feminine (־ות) | masculine | אָבוֹת טוֹבִים · שְׁלוֹשָׁה אָבוֹת |
| ערים | masculine | feminine | עָרִים גְּדוֹלוֹת · שָׁלוֹשׁ עָרִים |
| בתים | masculine | masculine | בָּתִּים גְּדוֹלִים · שְׁלוֹשָׁה בָּתִּים |
The numeral column deserves a second look, because Hebrew marks gender invertedly on the numbers 3 to 19: the ־ה ending is the masculine one. So three women is שָׁלוֹשׁ נָשִׁים with the bare numeral, and three fathers is שְׁלוֹשָׁה אָבוֹת with the ־ה — the exact opposite of what the two nouns' endings suggest.
ביקרנו בשלוש ערים בשבוע אחד, זה היה יותר מדי.
bikárnu beshalósh arím beshavúa ekhád, ze hayá yotér midáy
We visited three cities in one week — it was too much. (עיר is feminine, so the bare שלוש)
יש ועד הורים חדש, שלושה אבות ושתי אימהות.
yesh va'ád horím khadásh, shloshá avót ushtéi imahót
There's a new parents' committee — three fathers and two mothers. (אבות ends in ־ות and still takes שלושה)
שתי האחיות שלי גרות בחיפה.
shtéi ha'akhayót shelí garót bekhéifa
Both my sisters live in Haifa. (אחיות is also the word for nurses — context decides)
כל הראשים הסתובבו כשהיא נכנסה.
kol harashím histovevú kshehí nikhnesá
Every head in the room turned when she walked in.
האחים שלה שניהם חיילים עכשיו.
ha'akhím shelá shneihém khayalím akhsháv
Both her brothers are in the army now.
The full inventory of nouns whose ending disagrees with their gender — there are more than these — is on mismatched plurals.
Two that only look irregular
ילדים is not on the list, and it belongs on nobody's list. יֶלֶד is a segolate, and every segolate reshapes the same way in the plural: יֶלֶד → יְלָדִים exactly as סֵפֶר → סְפָרִים and כֶּלֶב → כְּלָבִים. It looks dramatic and it is completely regular; the pattern is on segolate nouns.
בתים is genuinely irregular, but not opaque. You can hear בית inside it: the diphthong áyi collapses to a plain a, and the ת picks up a dagesh — a dagesh after a long vowel, which is one of the classic oddities of Hebrew phonology and has no explanation you can use. Say batím, not báyitim, and move on.
בערים הגדולות אי אפשר למצוא חנייה בכלל.
be'arím hagdolót i efshár limtsó khanayá bikhlál
In the big cities you can't find parking at all.
And two that are duals, not plurals
יומיים yomáyim means exactly two days, and שנתיים shnatáyim exactly two years. They are not plurals of יום and שנה but a separate number category with its own ending, ־ַיִים, and they are covered on the dual.
נשארתי שם יומיים, ואז המשכתי צפונה.
nish'árti sham yomáyim, ve'áz himshákhti tsafóna
I stayed there two days and then carried on north.
גרנו בתל אביב שנתיים ואז חזרנו.
gárnu betél avív shnatáyim ve'áz khazárnu
We lived in Tel Aviv for two years and then came back.
Common Mistakes
1. Building the plural with the regular rule. The rule works on the other few thousand nouns, so the hand applies it here too.
❌ אישות
Incorrect as the plural of אישה — the plural is נשים. The string does exist in Hebrew, but אִישׁוּת is an abstract noun meaning 'matrimony'.
❌ ביתים
Incorrect as the plural of בית — it is בתים, batím: the diphthong collapses and the ת takes a dagesh.
❌ עירים
Incorrect as the plural of עיר — it is ערים, arím, with the masculine-looking ־ים sitting on a feminine noun.
✅ יש בארץ הרבה ערים קטנות ורק כמה גדולות.
yesh ba'árets harbé arím ktanót verák káma gdolót
The country has plenty of small cities and only a few big ones. (ערים ends in ־ים and still takes feminine adjectives)
2. Making the adjective agree with the ending. The ending is right in front of you and the gender is not, so the eye wins.
❌ נשים חכמים
Incorrect — נשים is feminine however its ־ים ending looks, so the adjective is feminine plural: נשים חכמות.
❌ אבות טובות
Incorrect — אבות is masculine however its ־ות ending looks: אבות טובים.
✅ שלוש נשים חכמות עמדו מאחורי כל זה.
shalósh nashím khakhamót amdú me'akhoréi kol ze
Three clever women were behind the whole thing.
✅ אבות טובים לא צריכים להיות מושלמים.
avót tovím lo tsrikhím lihyót mushlamím
Good fathers don't have to be perfect.
3. Marking the numeral off the ending. Two inversions stack here — the noun's ending misleads, and 3–19 mark gender the opposite way round — so this one goes wrong even for learners who know both rules separately.
❌ שלושה נשים
Incorrect — the numeral follows the gender, not the ending, and the ־ה form is the masculine one. נשים is feminine, so it takes the bare numeral: שלוש נשים.
✅ היו שם שלוש נשים ושני גברים.
hayú sham shalósh nashím ushnéi gvarím
There were three women and two men there.
4. Keeping the singular's stress. The plural suffix is stressed, and these nouns hide that behind a long-looking first vowel.
❌ בתים
bátim
Incorrect as a pronunciation — the ending carries the stress: batím. The qamats at the front is not the stressed vowel, however heavy it looks in the pointing.
❌ נשים
náshim
Incorrect as a pronunciation — nashím, stressed on the ending, exactly like anashím, arím, yamím and rashím.
✅ בשכונה הזאת כל הבתים נראים אותו דבר.
bashkhuná hazót kol habatím nir'ím otó davár
In this neighbourhood all the houses look the same.
Key Takeaways
- The irregular plurals are about a dozen words, and they are irregular because they are common. Learn them as a block.
- אנשים and נשים are not derived from איש and אישה. אנשים belongs with the base אֱנוֹשׁ; נשים is an old Semitic plural from a different root. איש's own plural, אִישִׁים, survives meaning public figures.
- The ending is not the gender. נשים and ערים are feminine with ־ים; אבות is masculine with ־ות. Everything that agrees agrees with the gender.
- בת → בנות is not suppletion but a restored consonant: the נ that בַּת assimilated reappears in the plural, which stays feminine.
- Numerals 3–19 mark gender invertedly, so a feminine noun takes the bare numeral: שלוש נשים, שלוש ערים — against שלושה אבות.
- ילדים is regular — an ordinary segolate plural — and בתים is irregular only in its vowel and its dagesh.
- יומיים and שנתיים are duals, not plurals: exactly two days, exactly two years.
- The stress is on the ending: batím, nashím, arím, yamím, rashím.
Now practice Hebrew
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Hebrew →