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

In this lesson, you will learn all about NOUNS. Also see - MOST COMMON MISTAKES IN ENGLISH & HOW TO AVOID THEM:    • 50 MOST COMMON MISTAKES in English Grammar...  

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.

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➜ ALL GRAMMAR LESSONS:    • GRAMMAR LESSONS - Learn English Lab  
➜ VERBS:    • VERBS - Basic English Grammar - What is a ...  
➜ PRONOUNS:    • PRONOUNS - Basic English Grammar - Parts o...  
➜ ADJECTIVES:    • ADJECTIVES - Basic English Grammar - Parts...  
➜ ADVERBS:    • ADVERBS - Parts of Speech Lesson 5 - Basic...  
➜ CONJUNCTIONS:    • CONJUNCTIONS - Parts of Speech - Advanced ...  

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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.