NOUNS and PLURALS

Nouns are the words for things, animals, people and thoughts.

For example, a teacher, a car, a house. They can be things that you cannot see – for example, peace, hope, fear, cold.

Words in English do not have a gender, as they do in European languages. They do not need different definite articles (for example, ‘le’ and ‘la’ in French, ‘el’ and ‘la’ in Spanish, ‘der’ and ‘die’ in German).

In English there is only one definite article – the.

Please see The Definite and Indefinite Article

The indefinite article in English is 'a'

In addition, we use ‘an’ before a vowel or silent ‘h’.

These words do not change for gender. Of course some words must have a gender, for example, ‘husband’ is obviously male and ‘wife’ is female.

Normally we show the difference by using different words, for example, ‘king’ and ‘queen’, boyfriend, girlfriend.

But generally it doesn’t matter: in the singular, ordinary words are simply –

a table, the table, an oven, the oven, a building, the building, and so on.

On this subject English is simple: you never have to think about gender – simply ‘a’ and ‘an’ in the singular (where there is only one item) and ‘the’ for singular and plural. The plural (more than one item) is not affected by gender either.

Your main task on nouns is the study of vocabulary: how to learn the words in English, how to remember them, how to use them in the right place.

Pronunciation is important too. Please see The Alphabet in English

PLURALS:

When there is more than one of a thing we usually have to change the singular word in some way to create the plural word. In most cases this is very easy in English – we simple add ‘s’ or ‘es’ to the basic word.

Like this –

Adding ‘s’......a table, four tables;    a lion, three lions;    a window, two windows

Adding ‘es’... a glass, two glasses; a beach, two beaches; a box, two boxes

Please see The –es ending.

Adding  ‘s’ or ‘es’ to the basic word will be correct in about 80% of cases (which means it is often safe to guess).

But the endings of plural words for the other 20% are important and must be noted –

a) where the word ends in ‘y’ after a consonant in the singular we must change the ‘y’ to ‘ies’ –

baby, babies;    country, countries;     pastry, pastries.

To remind you:  a vowel is any one of a, e, i, o, u.

{‘y’ is similar for most purposes} and a consonant is, generally,  any of the other letters of the alphabet.

b) Words that end in ‘y’ but don’t have a consonant in front of the ‘y’

(as the examples above have) add an ‘s’ as normal. Some examples –

Tray, trays; essay, essays; boy, boys; guy, guys and so on.

c) Where the singular word ends in...x...ch...o...sh... or...ss, we must add ‘es’ to form the plural, like this –

box, boxes;   touch, touches;  tomato, tomatoes;   brush, brushes; kiss, kisses.

You might notice that if, in the wrong cases, you try to pronounce the plural as the singular word plus ‘s’, the resulting word is difficult or impossible to pronounce. It will sound horrible and that is why the –es ending exists – to help us produce a good sound. Please see The -es ending

d) In English there is a category of words where we change the vowel(s) to create the plural. There are quite a lot of these words and nearly all of them are common, everyday words.

For example –

one foot, three feet; one goose, six geese;  one man, two men; one woman, four women; one tooth, two teeth.

In words of this kind the simple change of vowel(s) is all that is needed to make the plural: you MUST NOT also add ‘s’ or ‘es’.

e) Here is a list of 13 common words ending in ‘f’ or ‘fe’ which change in the plural. You may assume, as I do, that there are no more –

calf, CALVES*;   elf, ELVES;   half, HALVES*;     knife, KNIVES*; leaf, LEAVES*;   life, LIVES;   loaf, LOAVES*;     self, SELVES; sheaf, SHEAVES;  shelf, SHELVES;   thief, THIEVES*;   wife, WIVES*; wolf, WOLVES*.

You should not try to memorise this list but by reading it a few times you will get a feel for these changes. I have marked eight of these words which are fairly common.

f) In a few cases the plural is formed by adding ‘en’ to the singular –

child, children;   ox, oxen.

g) Foreign or contracted words ending in ‘o’ add ‘s’ to make the plural

photos, photos;     dynamo, dynamos;      piano, pianos.

You will pick these up with a little experience.

h) Some words are the same in the singular and the plural –

fish,    deer,    sheep,    salmon.

i) Some words MAY be collective words (describing a group or quantity) and they are the same in the singular and the plural –

information,   people,   folk,   straw, etc. etc.

Other words ARE collective all the time. They stay the same in the singular and the plural – furniture, homework, advice, knowledge. To put it another way, there is no plural word in these cases.

Definite and indefinite articles (as discussed above):

The definite article doesn’t really have a plural, as it is not the thing that changes. So we can safely say, the plural of ‘the’ is ‘the’.

In the case of the indefinite article [‘a’ or ‘an’] there is some academic debate. But we can ignore this and say, with confidence,

the plural of ‘a’ or ‘an’ is ‘some’ –

Examples -

Remember  that we are expressing an INDEFINITE article in the plural; no other word exists to express this indefinite amount.

Of course we could say ‘a few’ or ‘a small number’ but these phrases do not precisely convey the translation of the vague, general, plural equal to the indefinite ‘a’ or ‘an’ in the singular.

Anyone over the age of ten or eleven should study vocabulary (what words mean, word translations) in their own time, perhaps with friends.

It is expensive to go to a class just to read a dictionary, but the sound of the words is a different matter: you need good guidance on that.

I suggest that, when studying vocabulary you should hang your words on a ‘hook’ [or think of storing them in a ‘box’ for each topic].

In the beginning, this hook, or box, must hold or contain the things that are most important to you. I suggest that these topics might be –

• Your family
• Your life story (or CV)
• Your work
• Your hobbies and interests
• Your body (naming all parts)
• Your country
• Your religion
• Your politics
• 
  

and other subjects that you like.

This means that, at the beginning, you do not need to learn all the words related to tennis, or brain surgery, or the history of Alaska. What you learn at first is – WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN.

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