Irregular Plurals: אישה, בית, עיר, בן, יום, איש | Hebrew Grammar

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, בַּת bat giving בָּנוֹת banót, 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 reflects a historical נ assimilated into the consonant after it. In נָשִׁים that same old נ remains audible. The relation is real, but it belongs to the history of the word rather than to a plural rule a modern speaker can apply.

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?

Why איש/אנשים and אישה/נשים change stems

These two are the hardest to remember because neither plural is built by adding a modern Hebrew suffix to the singular stem.

אנשים supplies the ordinary plural of איש from the old אנשׁ stem also seen in אֱנוֹשׁ, the elevated word for man, mortal, and in אנושות humanity and אנושי human. איש also has a plural formed on its own visible stem, אִישִׁים — the Bible uses it for men (נִבְזֶה וַחֲדַל אִישִׁים, Isaiah 53:3), and Modern Hebrew has kept it with a narrowed meaning: public figures, as in אישי ציבור.

אישה and נשים are historical relatives. Comparative dictionaries reconstruct the feminine stem with a middle נ and an older consonant that became ש in Hebrew. The נ assimilated in the singular and is represented by the dagesh in אִשָּׁה; the plural נָשִׁים preserves it. Cognates such as Aramaic נְשַׁיָּא and Arabic nisāʾ show how old the plural stem is. This history explains the forms, but it does not give Modern Hebrew a productive way to build one from the other.

💡

Do not try to build נשים or אנשים with the modern ־ים/־ות rules. Their stem changes are inherited: אנשים uses the old אנשׁ stem, while אישה hides the נ that נשים preserves. Learn each singular–plural pair as vocabulary; the history explains it but does not turn it into a productive rule.

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 vá'ad 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.

shtei 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 its stem reshapes by the regular segolate plural pattern: יֶלֶד yéled gives יְלָדִים yeladím, just as סֵפֶר séfer gives סְפָרִים sfarím and כֶּלֶב kélev gives כְּלָבִים klavím. It looks dramatic and is predictable once you recognise the class; 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.

💡

Several nouns on this page also have irregular bound forms — בָּתֵּי־סֵפֶר, בְּנֵי־אָדָם, נְשׁוֹת־ — or irregular possessives such as אָבִי, אָחִי and בְּנִי. Learning the plural is therefore worth more than one paradigm cell; it prepares you for the rest of the word's behaviour. The bound forms are on plurals in smichut.

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

women

Incorrect with this meaning — the plural of אישה 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.
Both pairs inherit old stem changes. אנשים uses the אנשׁ stem also seen in אֱנוֹשׁ; in the feminine pair, אישה hides the historical נ that נשים preserves. איש's stem 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.
בַּת bat gives בָּנוֹת banót by restoring a 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 →