A noun is an important part of speech denoting an object or person. As in Russian, nouns in English answer who's questions? what? (who what?). Without this part of speech it is impossible to imagine any sentence, because the noun, one might say, along with the predicate, is the basis of any sentence.
What nouns are
Nouns in English can mean completely different concepts:
- Living creatures, people, people's positions: cat (cat), postman (postman), girl (girl), dog (dog).
- Things, food and objects: pen (pen), house (house), book (book), apple (apple).
- Various materials, minerals, resources: gold (gold), cotton (cotton), water (water).
- Processes, actions, emotions, states: growing (growth), running (running), laughter (laughter), tears (tears), sleep (sleep).
- Places, geographical points, cities: Saint Petersburg (St. Petersburg), forest (forest), land (land), Korea (Korea).
- Qualities of people: bravery (courage), tenderness (tenderness).
- Various abstract concepts: happiness (happiness), evil (evil).
- Proper names (names of mountains, seas, holidays, names and the like): Hollywood (Hollywood), the New Year (New Year), Adam (Adam), the Earth (Earth, planet Earth).
Genus in English
In our Russian language, nouns are divided by gender. But in English, a similar classification is also available.
The masculine gender in English has the following name: masculine. Let us give an example of some masculine nouns: they denote animated males:
- boy - boy;
- postman - the postman;
- uncle - uncle.
Feminine nouns in English represent female animate beings and are called: feminine. Here are examples of feminine nouns:
- bride - bride;
- mother - mother.
The middle gender is all inanimate objects, as well as some animals. In English it has a name: neuter.
- room - room;
- bird - bird;
- fork - fork;
- window - window.
But sometimes it happens that female affiliation can be determined by such suffixes as -ine, -ette, -ess:
- heroine - heroine
- Cigarette - a cigarette;
- hostess is the hostess.
In English, the affiliation with a person or animal can be indicated by adding a variety of indicator words to the noun, such as he, she, boy, girl, male, female and others:
- men-writer - writer (male writer);
- woman-actor - actress (female actor);
- boy-student - student (student-boy).
Innumerable, countable nouns
As in our native language, in English there are objects that can be counted: five spoons, two chairs, four boxes. But there are also such nouns that it is impossible to calculate, because they either denote abstract concepts, or some material object: sugar, happiness, laughter.
- Countable nouns in English include things, objects, people, what can be counted: a cup (cup), a spoon (spoon), a boy (boy), a bird (bird), a tree (tree). As you noticed, the article is always put with countable nouns.
- Uncountable nouns cannot be counted: hair (hair), information (information), sugar (sugar), weather (weather), happiness (happiness), news (news). Most often these are abstract concepts, material nouns or plural nouns.
The number of nouns in English
How does a plural form of a noun form in a given language? It is easy to do: just add the plural ending -s:
- a room - rooms
- a bag (bag) - baggs (bags);
- a fork - forks
- a page (page) - pages (pages);
- a frog (frog) - a frogs (frogs).
There are also nouns whose plural changes a little differently or does not exist at all. There are also words that already stand in the plural and do not have a singular.
Exceptions
To remember the following words as much as possible, we advise you to do various exercises. Exceptional English nouns:
- man (man) - men (men);
- woman (woman) - women (woman);
- mouse (mouse) - mice (mice);
- tooth (tooth) - teeth (teeth);
- foot (foot, foot) - feet (feet, feet);
- goose (goose) - geese (geese);
- swine (pig) - swine (pigs);
- child (child) - children (children);
- deer (deer) - deer (deer).
Some rules of education
There are also a few more rules to remember.
For nouns ending in f or -fe, the plural ending is of the form: -ves. Here are some examples:
- knife (knife) - knives (knives);
- leaf (leaf, leaf) - leaves (leaves).
The singular noun ending with -o adds the ending -s in the plural:
- radio (radio) - radios (radio in the plural).
However, if there is another vowel before the ending -o, when the plural is formed, the ending -es is added:
- potato (potato) - potatoes (potatoes).
A word ending with -y after a consonant changes this letter to the letter -i, and only then the ending -es is added:
- family (family) - families (families);
- fly (fly) - flies (flies).
However, if there is another vowel before the ending -y, this rule will not work:
- monkey (key) - monkeys (keys).
Nouns without a singular
In the Russian language there are a lot of words that have only the plural. Often they indicate paired items. And among the English plural nouns, there are those that have no singular at all:
- scissors - scissors;
- trousers - pants, trousers;
- customs - customs;
- scales scales;
- riches - wealth;
- goods - goods, goods;
- glasses - glasses;
- contents - content, content;
- clothes - clothes;
- wages - salary.
There is also a particularly noun - people, which is translated into our Russian language as "people" or "people". In various cases, it can be either a plural or a singular.
- In the case when it is generalized about "people", it has the plural: There are a lot of people (There are a lot of people).
- But if we mean "people", a general group of people, then the noun has a singular or plural: We should help people of every nationality, gender and religion (We should help people of any nationality, gender and religion).