English Grammar Course | Introduction to Nouns #1

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to this English course.

In today's video, I'm going to tell you about nouns.

Because in English, nouns are very important.

They are the basic element of a sentence.

So if you want to speak English,

you need to know about the different kinds of nouns.

And I'm going to try and teach you as well as I can.

Let's get started!

Ok, so let's start with concrete nouns.

Now in English, concrete nouns are people places or things,

including animals.

That you can see, that you can smell,

or taste, or hear, or touch.

So you can basically use your five senses.

Let me give you a few examples.

If we talk about people,

you could say, a man

or a teacher,

or me, Fanny.

Or Mr. Smith.

If we talk about places,

you could say,

a house, a school.

You could name a city like London.

Very nice city.

Or a beach.

And if you talk about things,

you could say a shoe,

you could say a marker,

you could talk about a dog

or food like a pizza.

These are concrete nouns....ok.

Now let's move on to abstract nouns.

So abstract nouns, unlike concrete nouns,

are ideas, concepts, emotions.

And you can't see an idea.

You can't smell a concept.

You can't taste an emotion.

Or hear it. Or touch it.

So they are nouns. They are things that exist, but

you cannot see them, or taste them.

You can't use your five sense.

To give you a few examples,

we could talk about love,

or time,

or religion,

rules.

These are all words that represent ideas, concepts... okay

They're abstract nouns in English.

Now, let's get into more detail about nouns.

Let's now see the difference between common nouns

and proper nouns which are very important in English.

So common nouns and proper nouns refer to people, places, things, ideas.

Let's see a few examples.

We could talk about people for example.

A woman.

That's a common noun.

But if we talk about a specific woman,

for example, me, Fanny.

That becomes a proper noun with a capital 'F'.

because, and you should know this,

proper nouns are always capitalized.

You could talk about places.

A city. That's a common noun.

But then you can name a specific city. Let's take a

great city, London, of course.

With a capital 'L'.

Remember proper nouns - always capitalized.

We can talk about things for example. An animal.

Let's take a dog. A dog.

That's a common noun.

But if we take a specific dog, like Snoopy - capital 'S',

that's the proper noun.

If we talk about things again, but for example, a car,

that's a common noun.

But if we name the brand, the specific brand of the car like Volvo,

that's a proper noun. And it takes a capital 'V'.

And finally, and we can say, a team - common noun.

But if we name a specific team, for example,

the best football team, Manchester United,

then that's a proper noun

and it's capitalized.

Now mind you,

'team', is a special word because it's called

a collective noun in English

because it refers to a group of people.

So collective nouns can be used as singular nouns or plural nouns.

But we will talk about this again later.

So now that we know a lot about nouns in English,

Let's practice finding nouns in a sentence.

Okay, first,

In my class at Oxford University, I have many friends.

My best friend is Jan.

I have a lot of love for her.

Jan has a cute dog.

Its name is Juju.

What are the nouns in these sentences?

If we take the first sentence,

In my class at Oxford University, I have many friends.

We have, class, and friends.

These are common nouns.

We also have a proper noun, Oxford University.

We know it's a proper noun because it's capitalized.

The second sentence is,

My best friend is Jen.

Now in this sentence,

the noun is, friend - common noun.

And there's also the word, Jen,

is also a noun but a proper noun. As you can see it's capitalized.

Then, I have a lot of love for her.

What noun can you see? Of course, 'love'.

Remember the abstract noun we talked about a few minutes ago.

And finally, Jan has a cute dog. Its name is Juju.

What nouns can we find?

We can see, 'Jen', again - proper noun.

'Dog' - common noun.

But also, 'name', and 'Juju'.

'Name's' a common noun.

'Juju' is the proper noun. It's capitalized.

As you probably know, I haven't mentioned, 'I', or 'her', or 'its'.

They are also nouns, but they are pronouns and

they're considered a different category in English.

We will talk about them in another video .

Great job guys!

Thank you for watching my video.

I hope you now have a better understanding of nouns in English.

Please keep practicing. Practice makes perfect.

I'm sure you will very soon be able to recognize nouns in a sentence.

Please make sure to watch my next video as I keep on talking about nouns.

See you.

Thank you for watching my video guys.

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