Nouns

This Nouns section brings together information about

•    Nouns - count nouns
•    Nouns - uncount nouns
•    Nouns - count/uncount nouns - common problems
•    Nouns - Proper nouns 

Count Nouns

Count nouns have two forms: singular and plural.
Singular count nouns refer to one person or thing:

a book; a teacher; a wish; an idea

Plural count nouns refer to more than one person or thing:

books; teachers; wishes; ideas

Singular count nouns

Singular count nouns cannot be used alone. They must have a determiner:

the book; that English teacher; a wish; my latest idea

Plural forms

We usually add –s to make a plural noun:

book > books; school > schools; friend > friends

We add -es to nouns ending in –ss; -ch; -s; -sh; -x

class > classes; watch > watches; gas > gases; wish > wishes; box > boxes

When a noun ends in a consonant and -y we make the plural in -ies...

lady > ladies; country > countries; party > parties

…but if a noun ends in a vowel and -y we simply add -s:

boy > boys; day > days; play > plays

Some common nouns have irregular plurals:

Man > men; woman > women; child > children; foot > feet;
person > people

Plural count nouns do not have a determiner when they refer to people or things as a group:

Computers are very expensive.
Do you sell old books?

Uncount Nouns

Some nouns in English are uncount nouns.
We do not use uncount nouns in the plural and we do not use them with the indefinite article, a/an.

We ate a lot of foods > We ate a lot of food
We bought some new furnitures > We bought some new furniture
That’s a useful information > That’s useful information

We can use some quantifiers with uncount nouns:

He gave me some useful advice.
They gave us a lot of information.

Uncount nouns often refer to:

• Substances: food; water; wine; salt; bread; iron
• Human feelings or qualities: anger; cruelty; happiness; honesty; pride;
• Activities: help; sleep; travel; work
• Abstract ideas: beauty; death; fun; life

Common uncount nouns

There are some common nouns in English, like accommodation, which are uncount nouns even though they have plurals in other languages:

advice	baggage	equipment	furniture	homework	information
knowledge	luggage	machinery	money	news	traffic

Let me give you some advice.
How much luggage have you got?

If we want to make these things countable, we use expressions like:

a piece of...

pieces of...

a bit of...

bits of...

an item of...

items of...

 Let me give you a piece of advice.
That’s a useful piece of equipment.
We bought a few bits of furniture for the new apartment.
She had six separate items of luggage.

but we do not use accommodation, money and traffic in this way.

Common problems with count/uncount nouns

1: Uncount nouns used as count nouns

Although substances are usually uncount nouns...

Would you like some cheese?
Coffee keeps me awake at night.
Wine makes me sleep.

... they can be also used as count nouns:

I’d like a coffee please.	=	I’d like a [cup of] coffee.
May I have a white wine.	=	May I have a [glass of] white wine.
They sell a lot of coffees.	=	They sell a lot of [different kinds of] coffee.
I prefer white wines to red.	=	I prefer [different kinds of] white wine to red.
They had over twenty cheeses on sale.	=	They had over twenty [types of] cheese on sale.
This is an excellent soft cheese.	=	This [kind of] soft cheese is excellent.

 2: Some nouns have both a count and an uncount form:

We should always have hope.
George had hopes of promotion.
Travel is a great teacher.
Where did you go on your travels?

3: Nouns with two meanings

Some nouns have two meanings, one count and the other non count:

His life was in danger.
There is a serious danger of fire.

Linguistics is the study of language.
Is English a difficult language?

It’s made of paper.
The Times is an excellent paper.

Other words like this are:

business	death	industry	marriage	power	property
tax	time	victory	use	work

 4: Uncount nouns that end in -s

Some uncount nouns end in -s so they look like plurals even though they are singular nouns.
These nouns generally refer to:

Subjects of study:	mathematics, physics, economics, etc.
Activities:	gymnastics, athletics, etc.
Games:	cards, darts, billiards, etc.
Diseases:	mumps, measles, rabies, etc.

Economics is a very difficult subject.
Billiards is easier than pool or snooker.
 

5: Group nouns

Some nouns, like army, refer to groups of people, animals or things, and we can use them either as singular nouns or as plural nouns.

army	audience	committee	company	crew	enemy
family	flock	gang	government	group	herd
media	public	regiment	staff	team

We can use these group nouns either as singular nouns or as plural nouns:

• My family is very dear to me.
  I have a large family. They are very dear to me. (= The members of my family…)
• The government is very unpopular.
  The government are always changing their minds.

Sometimes we think of the group as a single thing:

• The audience always enjoys the show.
• The group consists of two men and three women.

Sometimes we think of the group as several individuals;

• The audience clapped their hands.
• The largest group are the boys.

The names of many organisations and teams are also group nouns, but they are usually plural in spoken English:

• Barcelona are winning 2-0.
• The United Oil Company are putting prices up by 12%.
   

6: Two-part nouns

A few plural nouns, like binoculars, refer to things that have two parts.

glasses	jeans	knickers	pincers	pants	pliers
pyjamas	scissors	shorts	spectacles	tights	trainers
trousers	tweezers

These binoculars were very expensive
Those trousers are too long.
To make it clear we are talking about one of these items, we use a pair of …
I need a new pair of spectacles.
I’ve bought a pair of blue jeans.
If we want to talk about more than one, we use pairs of … :
We’ve got three pairs of scissors, but they are all blunt.
I always carry two pairs of binoculars.

Proper Nouns

Names of people, places and organisations are called proper nouns. We spell proper nouns with a capital letter:

Mohammed Ali; Birmingham; China; Oxford University, the United Nations

We use capital letters for festivals:

Christmas; Deepawali; Easter; Ramadan; Thanksgiving

We use a capital letter for someone’s title:

I was talking to Doctor Wilson recently.
Everything depends on President Obama.

When we give the names of books, films, plays and paintings we use capital letters for the nouns, adjectives and verbs in the name:

I have been reading ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
Beatrix Potter wrote ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’
You can see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

Sometimes we use a person’s name to refer to something they have created:

Recently a Van Gogh was sold for fifteen million dollars.
We were listening to Mozart.
I’m reading an Agatha Christie.