An Introduction To Nouns In English

Nouns are an important type of word in the English language and you are going to find them all over the place, so let’s look at what they are and how they work.

What Is A Noun?

Nouns are extremely common in English, I would actually imagine they are the most common types of words you will come across, but what exactly are they?

Nouns are easy to spot, they are used to name an object, thing, person or place and even an idea.

Just look around you right now, anything you see will be a noun. Your computer screen, the seat you are on, your hand and your mum …all nouns.

You can quickly see how there is going to be an endless number of nouns and how they are going to be extremely important in forming in a sentence.

Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Nous can also be placed into two types, Countable or Uncountable and this is actually really important.

Depending on what type of noun you are using, it will determine the articles you can use around them.

A countable noun is anything you can physically count and well, an uncountable noun is something you can’t. This all sounds a bit vague and there can be some cross over, but mostly its common sense and the context.

If I place some apples on a table, you are going to be able to see there are 4 or 5 of them and this would be countable. However, if I poured a big bag of rice on to the table, while you could sit there and count every gain …you’re not, so this would be uncountable. The same would be true apples if I somehow gathered every apple on earth onto the table; it’s going to be easier to just class them as uncountable.

Countable nouns can be used with numbers, such as “3 apples” and can also be found in singular and plural form.  They will also be used with A/An and many other determiners.

Uncountable nouns are not used in the plural form, the A/An form and also they are not paired with numbers (although some words will be in the plural, as that is just how they are and there is no signal version, such as trousers …the word “trouser” is not used in English. 

I don’t really want to go over this in too much detail here, but it is something you should lookout for, the more you listen to English the more you will start to pick up on the patterns of why some words are used in a certain way compared to others and this will usually be down if it is countable or not.  

Nouns Are Not Always Needed

While nouns are extremely common, you can actually have a sentence with no nouns. This is really a different lesson, but I will quickly cover Pronouns here as they are so closely linked.

You can replace a noun, with a pronoun, however, you do need to have the context set before hand so that everyone knows exactly what you are talking about. Although, this does mean you can have a sentence that has no nouns.

If we look at “Steve drives the car” this is a sentence with a Noun-Verb-Noun, but if you know who (Steve) and what (the car) I’m talking about, you could replace these nouns with pronouns and then the sentenced would be “he drives it” and while there are no nouns, you still understand from the context of the situation that I am talking about Steve and his car.  

Nouns Can Sometimes Be Verbs

This may sound confusing, but there are times when a noun can become a verb. This isn’t the case with every noun, in fact it probably is a small number, but you will come across it.

You can usually spot these nouns as they will have the –ing ending. Think of “smoke”, this is a noun, but when it is “smoking” it is now a verb.

Just be careful with this, as most verbs will be verbs, regardless of the –ing ending.

You are also going to notice the same word may be either, but it depends on the context/meaning. If you take the word “watch” this is both …but it depends on how you are using it. If you are using it as “wrist watch”, to tell the time, then the word watch is a noun …but if you are using watch to look, such as “I will watch this film” then it is a verb.

I wouldn’t worry about this too much, but it is good to be aware and always remember that English can be very confusing for no real reason, but with practice it will get easier for you.   

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can spot nouns and understand how they are extremely important in English. They are everywhere, so look out for them.

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