A noun is an important part of speech denoting an object or person. As in Russian, nouns in English answer the questions who? what? (who what?). Without this part of speech, it is impossible to imagine any sentence, because the noun, along with the predicate, is the basis of any sentence.
What nouns are there
Nouns in English can mean completely different things:
- Living beings, people, positions of people: 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, geographic 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, etc.): 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 there is also a similar classification.
The masculine gender in English has the following name: masculine. Here are some masculine nouns as an example: they denote animate male beings:
- boy - boy;
- postman - postman;
- uncle - uncle.
Feminine nouns in English denote animate female beings and are called: feminine. Here are some examples of feminine nouns:
- bride - bride;
- mother - mother.
Neutral is all inanimate objects, as well as some animals. In English it has the name: neuter.
- room - room;
- bird - bird;
- fork - fork;
- window - window.
But sometimes it happens that belonging to the feminine gender can be determined by such suffixes as -ine, -ette, -ess:
- heroine - heroine;
- cigarette - cigarette;
- hostess - hostess.
In EnglishIn a language, belonging to the gender of 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 (boy student).
Uncountable, countable nouns
Like our native language, there are things in English that can be counted: five spoons, two chairs, four boxes. But there are also nouns that cannot be counted, because they either denote abstract concepts or some material object: sugar, happiness, laughter.
- Countable nouns in English include things, objects, people, things that can be counted: a cup (mug), a spoon (spoon), a boy (boy), a bird (bird), a tree (wood). As you can see, countable nouns always have an article.
- Uncountable nouns cannot be counted: hair (hair), information (information), sugar (sugar), weather (weather), happiness (happiness), news (news). Most often these are abstract concepts, real nouns or nouns in the plural.
Number of nouns in English
How is a noun pluralized in this language? It's easy to do: just add the plural ending -s:
- a room (room) - rooms (rooms);
- a bag (bag) - baggs (bags);
- a fork (fork) - forks (forks);
- a page (page) - pages (pages);
- a frog (frog) - a frogs (frogs).
There are also nouns whose plural changes slightly differently or does not exist at all. There are also words that are already in the plural and do not have a singular.
Exceptions
To memorize the following words as much as possible, we recommend doing various exercises. Exceptional English nouns:
- man (man) - men (men);
- woman (woman) - women (woman);
- mouse (mouse) - mice (mice);
- tooth (tooth) - teeth (teeth);
- foot (leg, foot) - feet (legs, 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 just remember.
Nouns ending in f or -fe have a plural ending of the form: -ves. Here are some examples:
- knife (knife) - knives (knives);
- leaf (leaf, leaf) - leaves (leaves).
A singular noun ending in -o adds a plural ending -s:
radio (radio) - radios (radio plural)
However, if there is another vowel before the -o ending, thenin the formation of the plural, the ending -es is added:
potato (potatoes) - potatoes (potatoes)
A word that ends in -y after a consonant changes that letter to -i, and only then the -es ending is added:
- family (family) - families (family);
- fly (fly) - flies (flies).
However, if there is another vowel before the -y ending, this rule will not work:
monkey (key) - monkeys (keys)
Nouns with no singular number
There are a lot of words in Russian that have only the plural. Often they represent paired items. And among English plural nouns there are those that do not have a singular word at all:
- scissors - scissors;
- trousers - pants, trousers;
- customs - customs;
- scales scales;
- riches - we alth;
- goods - goods, goods;
- glasses - glasses;
- contents - content, content;
- clothes - clothes;
- wages - salary.
There is also a special noun - people, which is translated into our Russian language as "people" or "people". In different cases, it can be either plural or singular.
- When it is said in general about "people", it is plural: There are a lot of people (There are a lot of people here).
- But if there isfor "people", a general group of people, the noun is either singular or plural: We should help people of every nationality, gender and religion.
