NOUNS - Basic English Grammar - What is a NOUN? - Types of Nouns - Examples of Nouns - Common/Proper

Hi there and welcome back to our series of lessons on the parts of speech

My name is Ganesh and this lesson is all about nouns. In this lesson we will

learn about the different kinds of nouns there are in English and we will also

look at some rules to keep in mind when using them. We will first talk about

concrete and abstract nouns, then we'll look at common and proper nouns

which are a very important area. Then we'll discuss the very interesting

collective nouns and finally we'll turn to the most important topic relating to

nouns, and that is countable and uncountable nouns. Before we start just

remember - for any questions let me know in the comments section below and I'll

talk to you there.

OK so first of all what is a noun? I'm sure you know the answer to this -

A noun is just the name of a person, place, animal, thing, feeling or idea. For

example in this sentence "Graham likes to go to the zoo and see the animals." Here

there are three nouns - can you identify all of them? The nouns are Graham - a

person, zoo - a place and animals. Nouns can also be things like watch, T-shirt etc.

And all of these - people, places, animals and things are physical - that means we

can see them and we can touch them. So they are called concrete nouns - that

means they have a real physical existence. So what are abstract nouns?

Abstract nouns are nouns that don't have physical existence. That means we

cannot touch them or see them, and these are ideas and feelings. Now in this

sentence

"Honesty is the best policy." It's a very popular proverb in English

Have you heard of that? In that sentence

honesty and policy are both nouns but they are abstract nouns. And this next

example

"Love is a powerful emotion." Love is the name of a feeling like anger, happiness

or sorrow. And love is a noun. Emotion is also a noun.

OK let's now talk about common and proper nouns.

Do you know what common and proper nouns are? A common noun is a general noun and a

proper noun is the name given to a specific individual. For example in this

chart all the nouns on the left are common nouns and all the nouns on the

right are proper nouns. For example man is a common noun because it can mean any man

but Ganesh is the name of one man - one individual, which in this case is me of

course.

So Ganesh is a proper noun. Woman, in the same way, is a common noun - it could be any

woman but Allison is the name of an individual, so a proper noun. In the next

two, city and country are common nouns but Hamburg and China are the names of one

city and one country, so proper nouns.

OK now let me ask you a question at this point - do you notice something about the

proper nouns? You should be noticing that they're all written with a capital first

letter. And that is actually a rule in English - proper nouns are always written

with a capital first letter. With university, for example, when we talk

about universities in general we use it as a common noun so the whole word is

written in lower case - that means in small letters. But when we're talking

about a specific university like the University of Chicago, notice that both

the 'U' in University and the 'C' in Chicago are capitals.

That's because it's

a proper noun that refers to one specific university. OK there are more

examples on the screen but I want you to focus on the last two - day and month. With

the days of the week - Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,

Saturday, we always write them with the first letter capitalized because they

are proper nouns. And it's the same thing for months as well. From January to

December all months are written with a capital first letter, so please don't

forget this rule - proper nouns are always capitalized or always written with the

first letter capitalized.

OK let's now turn to the really interesting collective nouns. Collective

means something like collection and a collective noun is the name given to a

group of people - animals, places or things. I say that these are interesting because

there are a lot of collective nouns in English and they can be very interesting

to learn.

Let's look at some common examples - a group of players is called a team. Team

is a collective noun and it means a group of players, or it could even mean a group of

workers in a company. Actually there's another word for a group of workers or

employees - can you guess that word? That word is staff. In the same way on the

screen I have some more examples but I want you to guess the collective nouns

before I show them to you.

What do we call a group of students? A group of students is a class.

What about

a group of criminals? A gang A group of soldiers is an army.

What about a group of onlookers? Onlookers means - let's say there has been

an accident on the road - like there's been a car crash. Onlookers are the

people that stand around the scene and they want to see what's happening.

So what do you you call a group of onlookers? We call them a crowd.

Did you get that one? There are also collective nouns for animals. For example

a group of wolves is called a pack. And wolves are very dangerous when they're

in a pack. A group of bees is called a swarm. If you ever see a swarm of bees

coming towards you please run because they can sting really hard and it hurts

very, very bad.

Alright there are also collective nouns for things - like if I have five or

six keys in my hand

do you know what we call that? We call it a bunch of keys.

What about two shoes? A pair. And when there are stairs that you have to take

from one floor of a building to the next floor

do you know what we call that? It's called a flight of stairs. OK so like I

said these can be really interesting but there's one problem - collective nouns can

be difficult because there are so many of them. So what can you do?

Well there are two things that you can do - first

you can learn the most common collective nouns. The examples that I just showed

you are some very common collective nouns.

So if you learn the most common ones then you can use them fluently in

conversation but sometimes you might be in a situation where you want to use a

collective noun but you don't know it or you cannot remember it.

Like, let's say you want to say a gang of criminals but you cannot remember that

word - gang.

So what can you do? You can just use a word like group - a group of criminals - and

your meaning will be clear. Or you can say a bunch of things - the word bunch is

a common collective noun - like a bunch of bananas, for example. So these kinds of

expressions - common collective nouns and even quantity expressions like a lot of,

some etc. If you use them your meaning will be clear. But one reason to learn

collective nouns is that if you use the correct collective noun in a situation

it will make your speech sound stylish, so try to learn as many as you can.

Alright let's now move on and talk about the most important area relating to

nouns and that is countable and uncountable nouns. That's why I've underlined them

in red because they're so important.

Do you know the meaning of countable nouns? A countable noun is a noun that can be

counted and an uncountable noun cannot be counted. Some common countable nouns are are

book, pen, man, spoon, building, elephant etc. With all of these we can use numbers

or plurals to talk about them. We can say two books, five pens, three buildings

etc. If there's only one, we can use a or an - I have a book, there's an elephant

standing over there etc. But uncountable nouns are nouns like water, coffee, air,

salt, sugar, love, advice and so on.

And just by seeing them you should be able to say there's no way to count them

because water and coffee are liquids. Air is a gas. Salt and sugar are so small

that if you try to count the individual particles that would be an extremely

difficult task. And love and advice are abstract nouns because they're feelings

and ideas. Most abstract nouns are uncountable. So with uncountable nouns we

cannot use plurals and we cannot use a and an - that is very important. But we

can use units to talk about quantity. For example we can say a glass of water or

two glasses of water, six tablespoons of sugar or a cup of coffee,

5 cups of coffee and so on. Or we can use units of volume or weight like pounds,

kilograms, ounces and liters. This is how we talk about the quantity of

uncountable nouns. To ask questions we use the expression "How many...?" with

countable nouns like "How many computers do you have in your office?" And with

uncountable nouns we use "How much...?" "How much water is there in the bottle?" or "How

much sugar is there in the jar?" Now with any of these questions if you know the

exact answer you can give it - you can say "There are 20 computers in my office."

"There's half a liter of water." "There's four pounds of sugar in the jar." But what

about if you don't know the exact number or quantity? In that case you can use

quantity expressions with countable nouns - we use a 'few' to mean a small

number. I can say "Oh there are only a few computers in my office."

I don't know the exact number but it's a small number. Or I can say "There's only a

little water in the jar." So with uncountable

nouns we use 'a little' - this is very important. And what about to talk

about a big number or a big quantity? Can you tell me what we use with countable

nouns? We use 'many' or 'a lot of'. "There are many computers in my office." Or "There are

a lot of computers in my office." With uncountable nouns we can use 'much' but

that's less common.

It's more common once again to use 'a lot of' like "There is a lot of coffee in the

cup." So notice that 'a lot' can be used both with countable and uncountable

nouns. In the same way the word 'some' can also be used with both types. For example

"Some computers in my office

don't work." That's some number but I don't want to say the number or I don't know

the number. In the same way we can say "There's some tea left in the glass" - some

tea is some quantity but I don't know the quantity. So with both countable and

uncountable nouns we can use 'a lot of' and 'some.'

OK now I want to tell you about an area where a lot of students make mistakes, so

pay close attention. And this is when we want to make comparisons. We're going to

take a couple of examples - let's say that in my neighborhood, that is in the place

where I live, there are five buildings. In your neighborhood

there are 10 buildings. So we can say that there are more buildings in your

neighborhood.

OK just keep that in mind. And let's take another example - this time

uncountable nouns. I drink two cups of coffee a day but you drink four cups of

coffee a day, so you drink more coffee.

OK so far so good. But what about the opposite? We

say that I drink less coffee. Alright back to our first example, we said there

are more buildings your neighborhood. That means in my neighborhood there are

fewer buildings.

This is where a lot of people go wrong - people say there are less buildings in

my neighborhood. That is grammatically incorrect because with countable nouns

you cannot use less, you have to use fewer to compare.

OK so remember these rules and remember not to make the common mistakes that we

discussed here.

Alright let's do a quick recap of what we've learned today. We started with

concrete and abstract nouns. Remember that concrete nouns have a physical

existence and abstract nouns are ideas and feelings which we cannot touch or

see. Then we spoke about common and proper nouns - what is the important rule

with proper nouns? You always capitalize the first letter. Then we turned to

collective nouns. Remember to learn as many collective nouns as you can because

that will help you to speak with more style. And finally we looked at countable

and uncountable nouns - we discussed a number of rules. Remember the most common

mistake is using 'less' with countable nouns - it's wrong.

'Less' is used with uncountable nouns. 'Fewer' is used with countable nouns.

Alright so that brings us to the end of this lesson. I hope you enjoyed it.

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