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

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• published: 20 Sep 2016
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In this lesson, you will learn all about NOUNS. We will discuss what is a noun, the different types of nouns there are in English, and also rules of usage that you should know when using nouns. Throughout the lesson, I will show you how to avoid common errors that students make with nouns. Topics covered include concrete and abstract nouns, common and proper nouns, collective nouns, and countable and uncountable nouns. For more FREE English lessons, SUBSCRIBE to this channel. Transcript: 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.