to be totally confused about rooves and roofs?

[lessonsintightropes]

Or hooves and hoofs?

I don't know the rule and despite my fairly good comp secondary education, can't understand this.

Can any better-educated brethren shed light?

Roves is definitely what I was taught, as was hooves. Roofs is also acceptable - we had to look it up at work a few years ago as there was a huge barney about it in the office. We worked for a property company

Rooves obviously - bloody auto correct

Any noun that ends in -f becomes -ves when you make it into a plural.

Calves
Leaves
Dwarves
Rooves

I'd use roofs, but you can use either.

There's no rule. Some words just don't follow the usual conventions..

some words just do not follow the pattern and I think roofs is one of them

Is the plural of oaf actually oaves?

Never used rooves. Always roofs. This had got me thinking though!

Oxford dictionary says it's roofs.

it can be pronounced rooves but I have never seen it spelled that way.

Unlike hooves.

Roofs, oafs. Hooves.

dwarfs, roofs, hoofs, calves, leaves.

Tolkien used dwarves

The textbook I use for my adult class uses -ves for all those examples.

I was told by my french french teacher that english is considered one of the hardest western languages to learn because there a no rules!
We are mongrels, our language is bits and bobs from everywhere so we have rules and then exceptions to the rules that turn out to be more common than the rules themselves!

Where I live Brough (Bruff) Road is a through (throo) road, but the next largest town to us is Lough(Luff)borough(bruh)!

I use roofs and dwarves!

wowfudge rooves is wrong - see Chanbers and Oxford dictionaries - only roofs allowed

Rooftops.

Sorted.

Yes, I'd also use dwarves for mythical beings, but otherwise dwarfs.

Them tiles on the top of houses... sorted

I think the plural of roof is one of those words that slipped through the net.

I don't know how anyone could learn English fluently and efficiently as an adult. They must be genius. I'm fascinated by English language but then I've been brought up with it. :)

It's 'roofs'. Although I have no idea why.

The ve is an older rule, the fs spelling has been adopted though. So both are correct, roofs is more up to date.

Like sulphur and sulfur.

Is "rooves" an American spelling? (autocorrect hates that spelling so I'm guessing not)
Over 50, was taught "roofs" and not aware of having seen "rooves"

Roofs is correct.

It's all been said; the general rules is if a noun ends with -f, then the plural is -ves. As for most aspects of the English language, there are exceptions, roofs being one of them, although orally it's definitely a v sound.

Yes English is a bastard of a language, having been invaded left right and centre over the ages. It's the main reason there is roughly three times as much vocabulary as in French for example.

However there are plenty of rules to learn, it's just that for some reason it was decided that they wouldn't be taught in English State schools for something ridiculous like 30 years (I was born early 80's and never learnt any grammatical rules at school). Most people my age speak perfectly good English though so the intuitive side of learning to speak it obviously works to some extent.

Roofs and hooves.

Have never seen rooves.