Nouns, Adjectives, and Pronouns

Now that we know what all parts of speech are, let's look at them in more detail to see how they are different from each other and how they are used in sentences. First, let's see what other information we can learn more about nouns, adjectives, and pronouns.

Nouns

When we look at nouns in more detail, we can easily see how they are very different from the other parts of speech. We already learned that nouns can name a person, place, thing or idea. Let's see what other information we can add to that to learn more about nouns.

Nouns can be common or proper. This is important to know because proper nouns begin with a capital letter in Standard English, no matter where they are used in a sentence, whereas common nouns only begin with a capital letter at the start of a sentence.

Note: In English, names of languages, months of the year, and days of the week are proper nouns, so they will always be capitalized: Chinese, Arabic, January, Monday, June, Friday.

Common Nouns

Examples

Proper Nouns

Examples

any person, place, thing, or idea

teacher, state, city

My brother is a teacher.
Teachers are always busy.

specific persons, places, and things

Robert, California, Istanbul

Robert is a teacher in California.

Nouns can also be concrete or abstract. This is important to know because sometimes abstract nouns are easily confused with verb forms.

Concrete Nouns	Examples	Abstract Nouns	Examples
can be experienced through our senses	teacher, student, desk, cat, pen	cannot be experienced directly; they are a quality or idea	success, loyalty, freedom, achievement, arrival

Nouns also have both a singular and plural form. This is called number. A plural noun shows that there is more than one of that noun.

Generally, plural forms of nouns are created by adding an -s or -es to the end of a singular noun. However, there are irregular plural nouns that do not follow that same rule. Here are some examples:

Noun	Plural	Singular	Examples
1. Regular	add -s	most nouns (teacher, cat, college, phone) nouns that end in vowel+y (day)	teachers, cats, colleges, phones days
	add -es	nouns that end in sounds s, ss, z, sh, ch, x, and o (class, coach, box, tomato)	classes, coaches, boxes, tomatoes
	change y to i and add -es	nouns that end in consonant+y (city, country, family)	cities, countries, families
	change f to v and add -es	nouns that end in f (life, shelf, scarf)	lives, shelves, scarves
2. Irregular	no specific rule	child, tooth, goose, mouse	children, teeth, geese, mice