In this lesson, we will go down the language’s memory lane and brush up our skills of elementary grammar. These concepts become forgotten in a learner’s sense, while we do remember how to use it in our communication. Yet, we could end up making errors. Let us go about one of the most basic lessons of our school time. We shall talk about Nouns, its types, and discuss a few of its types in Part 1.
Part 1 will cover the other types, along with details and examples. Don’t forget to make an attempt at solving the exercise at the end of this lesson. It will only help you grade how well you understood these concepts.
In simple language, a noun is what you use to name things like people, places, animals, and things. For example, Tim, Jonnah, Canada, Snake, pen, shirt, book, mother, father, etc. all fall in this category. Without a doubt, it is one of the most important concepts in English grammar.
Additionally, qualities, states of mind, various concepts also fall in this category of the parts of speech. For example, bravery, honesty, socialism, democracy, etc. are qualities and concepts.
There are eight types of nouns in English grammar:
1. Concrete
2. Abstract
3. Countable and Uncountable
4. Collective
5. Compound
6. Possessive
7. Regular
8. Irregular
Concrete nouns are further divided into Proper and Common nouns.
Those things or people that we can see and touch all belong to this bifurcation. Like we read above, these have two more divisions. They are: Proper and Common. Let us understand these in detail with examples.
Proper nouns: They are words that identify a person, building, or even an organization for that matter. Typically, all of these begin with a capital letter. When one reads such words, they can immediately identify with the person, place, etc., and hence they get this name. Example: Rosaline, London, Jupiter, Google, etc.
Common Nouns: These are those words that do speak about names places or people but in a common form. It is a generic name for a particular group or class of things/people/places. However, since they are common, they do not require capitalizations at all times. Example: flowers, people, animals, things.
Now when we say Sunflower, in particular, it is a proper noun. But since we say flowers, it is defining a group of items that belong, and so, they are common nouns.
Words that express a person’s state of mind, general qualities, or even an idea for that matter are abstract. Example: truth, anger, love, fear, misery, friendship, beauty. Do you see how these are ideas, qualities, or a state of mind? Basically, these are words that one cannot touch, feel, smell, or taste.
Much like the name suggests, the things that one can count, are countable. For example, Apples, pencils, buildings, bottles, etc. On the other hand, uncountable are those that require a unit of measurement and you cannot count as it is. These are things like water, air, rice, etc.
All the things that we can collect and place in one group define this kind of speech. The linguistic dictionary defines it as a collection of things taken as a whole. When we can group many nouns falling in the same category, they are collective nouns. For example: A hive of bees, a school of fish, a fleet of ship, a committee, a family, etc.
As you see, there are many bees (all nouns), but collectively, we call it a hive. A committee will have several members (also nouns), but since they are working for the same intention, their collective name is a committee.
In this lesson, we took a look at four noun types. We learned about Concrete nouns and its two types: Proper and Common. The others were Abstract, Countable & uncountable and collective nouns.
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Exercise on Nouns
Now that we have a good understanding of four types of nouns out of 8, why don’t we solve some exercises before we move on to studying the next four? You have to name which noun the following words belong to and leave them for us in the comment section.
- Society
- Chair
- New York
- Uncle
- Air
- City
- Jury
- Kindness
- Sparrow
- Birth
Once you solve these questions, jump straight to part 2 of the lesson on nouns to complete this concept. Share the lesson with friends and family to brush up your elementary grammar.
Very nice online English Learning.. Though it’s not required so much.. But brushing up few things always helps improve… Keep it up.. Good job for many leaners
1. Collective
2. Proper
3. Proper
4. Proper
5. Uncountable
6. Common
7. Collective
8. Abstract
9. Proper
10. Abstract