- Michael likes Sally.
- New York City is big.
- The cookies are on the table.
- The lion is sleeping.
- Happiness is the most important thing in life.
1. Nouns can be the subject or object of a sentence or question.
- The dog ate chocolate .
(The dog is the subject and chocolate is the object.) - The boys are playing.
- The ball hit the boy .
- I like apples and bananas .
- She has time, but no money .
- We can sleep at home or at a hotel .
- I have a dog, a cat, 2 hamsters, and a turtle .
- She likes movies, fantasy books, and the beach .
- Henry has a ball, a glove, a tent, a phone, but no water .
- Carly will buy shoes, a shirt, or a dress .
Proper nouns are the names of people, places, companies, works of art or monuments, days of the week, months, holidays, etc. In English we capitalize the first letter of a proper noun (the first letter will be a big letter). Here are some examples.
Jon | Sally | Italy | Brazil |
Coca-Cola | Nike | the Mona Lisa | the Eiffel Tower |
Monday | Saturday | June | September |
Christmas | Ramadan | Asia | Europe |
Common nouns are everything else. They are just one of many. The first letter of common nouns is not capital unless it is the first word of a sentence.
- I like movies .
- Movies are good.
book | table | computer | cat |
tree | rock | sand | shirts |
glasses | cups | pizza | water |
5. Many nouns can be singular or plural. Singular means one. Plural means more than one. We can make most nouns plural by adding ‘-s' or ‘-es' to the end of the noun.
- one book / 20 books
- an apple / four apples
- a dish / 100 dishes
- 1 bench / 4 benches
- 1 man / 3 men
- one child / four children
- a knife / 5 knives
- a strawberry / 97 strawberries
glasses | pants | clothes |
There are many rules and this can be a little hard at first for English learners. This can be difficult and annoying at first, but if you study and review these words consistently, then it will become easy quickly.
6. There are two kinds of common nouns – count nouns and non-count nouns. These are sometimes called countable nouns and uncountable nouns.
Countable nouns are nouns that can be counted (1 apple, 2 apples, 3 apples, etc.). If a noun is countable then it can be singular or plural. We studied this in #5.
- I have one book. / I have 5 books .
- She has a brother. / She has 3 brothers.
- There is one library in town. / There are two libraries in town.
water | rice | love |
happiness | air | butter |
Many times, we can change a non-count noun into a count noun by adding a countable object.
- I have water.
- I have 2 bottles of water.
There are also many exceptions. Some nouns can be both count or non-count depending on the sentence.
- I have coffee.
- I have 2 coffees.
There are many exceptions like this.
This can be very difficult and frustrating for English learners. It takes practice and time to remember all of these.
7. We often use articles before nouns. Articles are a, an, and the.
"A" and "an" only go with singular nouns. You can always change "a/an" to "one". When we use "a" or "an" it means the noun is not special.
- I have a book.
(=I have one book.) - She has an apple.
(=She has one apple.)
- There is an alligator.
- An elephant is drinking water.
- A cat is sleeping.
- She has a car.
- Give me a book.
(The book could be any book. It doesn't matter which book.) - Give me the book.
(The speaker is talking about a special or particular book.)
7. Noun clauses are a group of words that take the place of a noun. They start with question words, if, or whether. If there is a noun in a sentence, then it is possible to replace it with a noun clause. Look at some examples.
- I don't know Sally. (Noun)
- I don't know where Sally went. (Noun clause)
- I am thinking about my work. (Noun)
- I am thinking about what to do next. (Noun Clause)
- What I like about you is your smile.
- She doesn't know who will come.
- They are looking forward to what they will do on their vacation.
- I don't know if it rained yesterday.
We covered the main things that we must know about nouns in this lesson, but we did not cover them in much detail. The following lessons will cover these topics in much more detail.
If you want to be an advanced or fluent English speaker, then you have to know everything that was covered in this lesson.