In this Basic English grammar lesson, Emmelda teaches you nouns and very specifically collective nouns and uncountable nouns which many English learners and even the native speakers often get confused with.
Nouns: are names given to people, places animals or things.
- John lives in the UK with his dog called snoopy who loves to play with his ball.
- John is a name of a person, UK is a name of a place, a dog is an animal and ball is a thing.
- A proper noun is a name of a person, place or an organization. All proper nouns begin with a capital letter.
Pronoun: is a word that replaces a noun.
- Example: ‘He’ replaces John.
Collective nouns: are words given to a group of people, animals or things.
- Example: for a group of people in an organization, we say ‘team’. The team is efficient. (not ‘are’)
- Example: class of students
- Example: Family (consists of more than 2 members)
Remember, when you use a collective noun, use a singular verb and not a plural verb.
- Example: Police is followed by a singular verb ‘is’.
For animals:
- Example: A herd of zebras is moving away to escape the lion’s angry roar.
- Example: An army of frogs, school of fish,
For things:
- Example: A bunch of grapes, a clutch of eggs, a dozen of eggs, a deck of cards, a fleet of ship/ planes.
Uncountable nouns: are nouns that you can’t count, like liquids. You can’t count water as 1 water, 2 water. Other uncountable nouns are advice, information, intelligence, garbage.