Basic English: The 8 Parts of Speech

Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson is looking at the parts of speech. Okay? So,

grammar and these grammatical terms. So, this is if you're a beginner learning English or

you may be a native speaker, you just want to refresh your memory about what the parts

of speech are. Or if you were at school at a time when grammar wasn't taught very much

and you're a bit unsure about what nouns and verbs and adjectives are, this should be quite

a useful overview... Review for you of the different terms and what they are with some

examples to illustrate. Okay, so let's have a look. So, starting with nouns, which are usually

things or people, or they could be abstract ideas as well, but... So, things like table, chair, cat,

dog, and people. People's names, John, Mary, with a capital first letter. Okay? You can have

abstract nouns as well, such as thought and love, happiness. Those are sort of intangible, as they're

called, abstract nouns. Proper nouns are the ones which are names, and then just ordinary nouns,

common nouns are the ones which are things, objects, or animals. Okay? So, those are things and people,

sometimes concepts, abstract concepts as well. Okay. Right. So, next one is a verb, which is

either an action, mostly actions, but it can also be just a state of being in a particular state.

So... And the verb, the infinitive of the verb begins with "to", so "to be", "to have", etc.

So, "to be" is a verb of state because it just means you exist, something... Or something exists.

It is "to be", so that's a state rather than an action, but most verbs are actions. Okay.

So, "to be", "to have", "to do", "to work", "to sing". So, anything to do with

something that you do, an action, really. Okay.

Then an adjective describes a noun, so back to the nouns. Large, so "large table",

small, "small chair", so it goes in front of the noun. Unlike in a lot of other languages,

other than English, the adjective comes after the noun quite often, but in English

the adjective comes before the noun. Okay. So, "large", "small", "red", any colours are adjectives.

"Clean", "clean" or "dirty" are adjectives. "Nice", "horrible", they're all adjectives

describing something. So, "a small cat", "a red dog", "a nice chair", "a clean table". Okay?

So, these... Obviously all these parts of speech work together with other parts of speech in a

certain order. Right. So, next one is an adverb. You see the word "verb" is in it, "adverb" which

describes how an action is done. So, the action is the verb, and the adverb describes how the

action is done. So, you either do something quickly or slowly or happily or sadly, or you

do it well or badly. So, often adverbs end "ly", but not always. So, words like "well" are also

adverbs, but usually you can recognise an adverb from "ly" at the end. Okay.

Right, so thinking of a sentence, the structure of it, a conjunction is a word that joins

different parts of the sentence. So, an obvious one is "and", and another is "but",

but you can also have other sort of joining words like "which" and "when", and so on. Okay.

Right. And then the next one is the article. So, usually it's either "the" or "a" or "an".

Because "the" is a specific one that you're pointing to, and "a" is just maybe one of many

possible ones. Okay. More general. So, those are called articles. So, that comes in front of,

usually, a noun. It could come in front of... It could come first, and then an adjective,

and then a noun. You know, "the red dog" you could have, or just "the chair". So,

sometimes you put the adjective in between the article and the noun. Okay. You can also have

words like "some", which come before the noun. "Some dogs", "many chairs", so it sort of defines

you know, how many sometimes. "Some" and "many", as well as "the", "a", "an".

Okay. Then a pronoun. So, we've got the word "noun" here, and "pro" in front of it. So,

a pronoun replaces a noun. It saves you having to give the noun. So, "I", rather than my name,

I... It's "I" and "you", rather than "John", "you", and "he", "she", "it", "we", "they",

those are called personal pronouns, all to do with people or things, again. "It" can refer to

a chair, the chair. "It", "it is broken", and people say, "What? What is broken?"

"The chair that I just mentioned, it is broken." So, you have to mention the noun first

in the previous sentence, perhaps. "Oh, look at the chair, it is broken." So,

it refers back to something you've already mentioned, and it saves you having to say,

"Look at the chair, the chair is broken." It saves having to repeat the same word again.

Okay. And then finally, prepositions, which are all to do with a location or a direction.

It could be some movement towards something, or it could be to do with being in a location

and your relationship to that location. So, "at", "I am at the supermarket."

"I'm going to the supermarket", so that's more movement direction. "On", "I'm sitting on the

chair." "I'm going up the stairs" or "down the stairs." "I'm in the house." So, that's all to

do with the relationship to where you are, or where you're going from one place to another.

Okay. So, I hope that's been a useful run-through, revision of these parts of speech. So, if you

remember eight, most people say eight parts of speech, so you can always think, okay, try to

test yourself in your head. Can I think of all eight of these words? Okay. So, if you'd like to

test yourself on the parts of speech, there's a quiz on the website, www.engvid.com, if you'd

like to go there and see how you do. And I hope that's been a helpful session. So, thanks for

watching, and hope to see you again soon. Okay. Bye for now.