Introduction English

Nouns
It’s no easy to describe a noun in simple terms, nouns are things like food, happiness,
another example a human being.
What are nouns?
The simple definition is a person, place or thing it can be classified as countable an
uncountable noun.
Proper nouns: Do we say “Atlantic ocean or the Atlantic ocean”? Should I write “february
or February?
Nouns as adjective: sometimes we use a noun to describe another noun. In that case, the
first “noun” is acting as an adjective.
Nouns name people, places and things. Every noun can further be classified as common or
proper noun. A proper noun has two distinctive features:
1) It will name specific item
2) It will begin with a capital letter no matter where it occurs in a sentence
Read the following sentences. Notice the difference between the common and proper
nouns.
Tina offered Antoine one of her mother’s homemade oatmeal cookies but only a Oreo
would satisfy his sweet tooth.
Charlie had wanted an easy teacher for his composition class, but he got Mrs. Hacket
whose short temper and unreasonable demands made the semester a torture.
Gloria wanted to try a new restaurant so Richard took her to Tito’s tacos where no one
dips into the hot sauce until the drinks have arrived at the table.
In English grammar, words that refer to people, places or things are called nouns. They
can be classified in many ways.
One way to classify nouns is according to whether they can be counted or not counted.
Many English mistakes are related to this point. By reading through this page will
understand.
Count nouns are words which can be counted. They have a singular and a plural form.
They usually refer to things. Most countable nouns become plural adding an “s” at the end
of the word.
Not count nouns are words which cannot be counted. Therefore they only have a singular
form.
Words can be combined to form compound nouns. These are very common, and new
combinations are invented almost daily. They normally have two parts. The second part
identifies the object or person in question. The first part tells us what kind of objects or
person it is or what is purpose is.
The two parts maybe written in a number of ways.
1._ as a word: policeman, boyfriend.
2._ as two words joined with a hyphen, Dinning-table
3._ as two separate words fish tank.
There are no clear rules about this, so write the common compounds that you know well
as one word and the others as two words.
The two parts may be:
Noun + noun: Bedroom, water, tank, motorcycle, printer cartridge
Noun + verb: rainfall, haircut, trainspotting
Noun + adverb: hanger-on, passer-by
Verb + noun: washing machine, driving license, swimming pool
Verb + adverb: lookout, take-off, drawback
Adjective + noun: greenhouse
Adjective + verb: dry-cleaning, public speaking
Adverb + noun: onlooker, bystander
Adverb + verb: output, overthrow, upturn, input
Compound nouns often have a meaning that is different from the two separated words.
Stress is important in pronunciation, as it distinguishes between a compound noun and an
adjective with a noun.
In compound nouns, the stress usually fall on the first syllable:
A greenhouse (Place where we grow plants) green’ house (house painted green)
Many common compound nouns are formed from phrasal verbs
Examples:
Breakdown, outbreak

Pronouns

The teacher gave me some homework.

A problem of case:
1) Mary and I are delighted to be here today.
2) The letter was addressed to Mary an me
An easy way to check the correct case is to try the sentence without Mary would you say
“I am delighted to be here”? Or “me am delighted to be here”? Would you say “The letter
was addressed to me “Or the letter was addressed to I”?
Pronouns are small words that take place of a noun. We can use a pronoun instead of a
noun.
If we didn’t have pronouns we would have to repeat a lot of nouns, we would have to say
things like:
Do you like the president? I don’t like the president. The president is too pompous.
With pronouns we can say:
Do you like the president? I don’t like him. He is too pompous.

Adjectives
Adjectives to describe or give information about nous or pronouns.
The good news is that the form of adjective does not change. It does not matter if the
noun being modified is male or female, singular or plural, subject or object.
Sometimes adjectives give us factual information about the noun, age, size, color, etc.
Some adjectives show what somebody thinks about something or somebody.
If you are asked questions with which, whose, what kind or how many you need an
adjective to be able to answer.
There are different types of adjectives in the English language.
Numeric, Quantitative, Qualitative, Possessive, Interrogative and Demonstrative.
Comparison of adjectives
Amy is tall
Job s taller than Amy
Mohan is the tallest of the three
In the second sentence, the word “taller” is the comparative form of the adjective. The
comparative form of the adjective denotes a higher degree of the adjectives “tall” when to
people or things are comparative.
In the third sentence, the word “tallest” is the superlative form of the adjective. The
superlative form of the adjective denotes the highest degree of the adjective “tall” when
more than two people or things are compared.
Here are some simple rules to keep in mind when forming comparatives and superlatives:
Rule 1
For most adjectives “er” is added for the comparative form and “est” for the superlative
form.
Tall, taller and tallest
Strong, stronger and strongest
Short, shorter and shorter
Kind, kinder and kindest
Rule 2
For adjectives ending with “e” , “r” is added for the comparative for and “st” for the
superlative form. For example
Wise, Wiser and Wisest
Rule 3
For adjectives ending with “y” , “y” is removed and “ier” Is added for the comparative
form an “iest” for the superlative form.
Lazy, lazier and laziest
Crazy, crazier and craziest
Wealthy, wealthier and wealthiest
Heavy, heavier and heaviest
Rule 4
Usually for longer adjectives ‘more’ + adjective is used for comparative form and ‘most’ +
adjective is used for superlative form.
Handsome, more handsome and most handsome
Beautiful, more beautiful and most beautiful.
Intelligent, more intelligent and most intelligent.
Difficult, more difficult and most difficult.
Rule 5
Irregular adjectives: there are some irregular adjectives for which the comparative and
superlative form follow no particular rule.
Good, better and best
Bad, Worse and worst
Many, more and most
Little, lees and least

Verbs
The verb is king in English. The shortest sentences contains a verb. You can make a one-
word sentence with a verb, for example “Stop” You cannot make a one-word sentence
with any other type of word.
Verbs are sometimes described as “action words”. This is partly true. Many verbs give the
idea of action, of doing something. For example, words like run, fight, do and work all
covey action.
But some verbs do not give idea of action, they give idea of existence, of state, of being.
For example verbs like be, exist, seem and belong all convey state.
A verbs always has a subject.
In the sentence John speaks English
John is the subject an “speak” is the verb. In simple terms, therefore, we can say that
verbs are words that tell us what a subject does or is; they describe.
Action: Ram plays football
State: Anthony seems kind
There is something very special about verbs in English. Most words (adjectives, adverbs,
preposition, etc.)do not change (although nouns can have singular and plural form). But
almost all verbs change in form. For example, the verb work has five forms:
To work, work, works, worked and working
Of course, this is still very few forms compared to some languages which many have thirty
or more forms for a single verb. In this lesson we look at the ways in which we classify
verbs, followed by a quiz to test your understanding.
Verbs classification
We divide verbs into two broad classification:
Main verbs and helping verbs.
Now imagine that the same stranger walks into you room and says:
I teach
People eat
Do you understand something?
Has this person communicated something to you? Probably yes! Not a lot, but something.
That’s because these verbs are main verbs and have meaning on their own. They tell us
something. Of course, there are thousands of main verbs. In the following table we see
example sentences with helping verbs and main verbs.
Notice that all of these sentences have a main verb. Only some of them have a helping
verb.
John likes coffee
You lied to me
We must go now

Adverbs
The principal job of an adverb is to modify (give more information about) verbs, adjectives
and other adverbs. In the following examples, the adverbs is in bold and that it modifies is
in italics.