Spoken English Tutorial - Day 1 (Part I) Hindi Support

Day 1 - How to greet?
Language Support: Hindi
This module support Hindi language to understand the basics of English.

The only course in India that allows you to speak and practice English communication. You must enroll for the complete course in order to access practice modules to speak in English. You can download SpeakToday application after course registration. It will allow you to speak to your PC using your own voice and it corrects you when you are wrong. Speak LIVE to animated characters like Doctor, Teacher, Coach etc.

Learn English - Children's English tutorial - shapes and colors

This tutorial teaches a few common colors and shapes of the English language

Nouns – Types of Nouns

Types of Nouns

There are many different types of nouns. We capitalise some of them, like London, Tuesday or Elizabeth while we do not capitalise others unless they appear at the start of a sentence. There is a whole series of noun types and a noun will belong to more than one type: it will be proper or common, abstract or concrete, and countable or uncountable or collective. Let us take a look at 4 other types of nouns first, then we will deal with the rest by the pairs.

Noun Gender
Most common nouns like teacher, accountant, lawyer can refer to both men or women. In the old days, some nouns would change form depending on their gender but this use of gender-specific nouns is not so common today.

Those still in use tend to refer to occupational categories for example, author/authoress, actor/actress, waiter/waitress.

Noun Plurals
Most nouns change their form to indicate number by adding “-s”. Nouns that end with a “hissing” sound or end in “o” form the plural by adding “-es”. Nouns ending in “f” or “fe” form the plural by deleting the “f” or “fe” and adding “ves”. Words ending in “y” form the plural by deleting the “y” and adding “ies” unless the “y” ending is preceded by a vowel. For examples: cat/cats, match/matches, leaf/leaves, wife/wives, pony/ponies, boy/boys, toy/toys.

Irregular Noun
Other nouns form the plural irregularly. For example: man/men, child/children, foot/feet, mouse/mice, ox/oxen, sheep/sheep, person/people. Since there is no “s” at the ending of such plural nouns, you will have to add apostrophe “s” (‘s) to make it possessive.

So you can say there is no fixed rule in this category of nouns. Have a good dictionary at hand to help you when in doubt.

Possessive NounsTruefriend4
In the possessive case, a noun or pronoun changes its form to show that it owns or closely related to something else. You usually form the possessive case of a singular noun by adding apostrophe and the letter “s” (‘s) and for singular noun ending in “s” to add an apostrophe (‘) or apostrophe and “s” (‘s). For example: the boy’s ball, the bus’s seats, Ross’ shirt.

You can form the possessive case of a plural noun that does not end in “s” by adding apostrophe and “s” (‘s) as: children’s toys, people’s home.

You can form the possessive case of a plural noun that does end in “s” by adding an apostrophe(‘) : wives’ dresses, waitresses’ lunch boxes.

Note: Although we can use “of” to show possession, it is more usual to use possessive apostrophe and “s” (‘s). For example; the friend of my father / my father’s friend. The second example is more natural.

Collective Nouns
A collective noun is a noun naming a group of things, places, animals, or people. You could count the individual members of the group, but you usually think of the group as one unit. You need to be able to recognise collective nouns in order to maintain subject-verb agreement. A collective noun is similar to an uncountable noun, and is roughly the opposite of a countable noun.

For example: A herd of cattle crosses the river (“herd” is a collective noun in a singular form even though we are talking about many, therefore the word “crosses” (verb) has to be in singular form as well.

Nouns – What is a Noun?

Understanding Nouns

A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea. It is a name of anything! The bold words in the following sentences are nouns:

The cat is out of the bag.
My father works in the bank.
The train checker checks the passengers’ tickets.

The problem with this simple definition is that it does not explain why “love” is a noun but can also be a verb.

A clearer way of looking at nouns is by its ending, its position and its function.

Noun words ending in

    ity} sensitivity, creativity, nationality
    ment} judgement, appointment, contentment
    ness} greatness, gentleness, kindness
    ation} plantation, temptation, orientation
    hood} knighthood, boyhood, livelihood
    ful} spoonful, plateful, cupful (this is not a fixed rules as some words ending in -ful can be adjectives for example careful, beautiful, pitiful, powerful

Noun position in a sentence

We can easily recognise nouns in the position of a sentence which often comes after a determiner word like a, an, the, this, my, such etc:

    a cat
    an appointment
    the condominium
    this plantation
    my handbag
    such creativity

Nouns also often comes after one or more adjectives:

    a black cat
    a business appointment
    the 5-star condominium
    this rubber plantation
    my pink beaded handbag
    such intelligent creativity

Noun function in a sentence

Nouns have specific function in a sentence, for example:

    subject of verb: Children play quietly.
    object of verb: She loves cats.
    subject and object of verb: Tellers dispense money.

Not all subjects or objects of a sentence is always a noun. It could be a pronoun or a phrase. His children play quietly – “children” is the noun but “His children” is the subject.

Proper Nouns vs Common Nouns

A proper noun is the name of a person, animal, place or organization, for example, James, Snoopy, England, Paris or Motorola. A name is a noun, but a very special noun—a proper noun. Proper nouns have their own rules…..we always used capital letter for the first letter of a proper noun; examples as shown below:

Proper Nouns vs
   

Common Nouns

James, Elton
   

man, boy, father, son

Susan, Jane
    woman, girl, mother, daughter

Pizza Hut, Walmart
   

eatery, megastore

Agilent, Toshiba
   

factory, company

Monday, October
   

day, month

Malaysia, London
   

country, city

Blue Ocean, Superman Returns
   

book, movie

Proper Nouns without THE

    We do not use “the” with names of people
    We do not normally use “the” with names of companies except if the registered name of the company starts with “The” e.g. The China Post.
    We do not normally use “the” for banks, hotels, shops etc. named after a person with – ‘s or -s e.g. McDonalds
    We do not normally use “the” with names of places e.g. Malaysia, Europe, Paris except if a country is with the word “Republic”, “States” and “Kingdom” e.g. The People’s Republic of China, The United Kingdom, The United States of America.
    We do not use “the” with “Dr/Mr/Mrs/President/Professor with name e.g Dr Watson, President Bush, Mr & Mrs Smith.
    We do not use “the” with Lake/Mount with name e.g. Lake Michigan, Mount Everest.
    We do not normally use “the” for streets, roads, square, parks e.g Victoria Street, Clove Hall Road, Tianmen Square, Hyde Park.
    Many big, important buildings have names made of two words (for example, Kennedy Airport). If the first word is the name of a person or place, we do not normally use “the” e.g. St. Peter’s Church, Heathrow Airport

Proper Nouns with THE

    We normally use “the” for country names that include “States”, “Kingdom”, “Republic” etc (as above).
    We normally use “the” for names of canals, rivers, seas and oceans eg, the Suez Canal, the Yangtse River, the Dead Sea, the Atlantic Ocean.
    We normally use “the” for plural names of people and places e.g. the Tans, the Smiths, the Virgin Islands, the Philippines, the Himalayas, the Alps.
    We normally use “the” with the following sorts of names e.g. the Shangri-La Hotel, the Peking Restaurant, the Citibank, the White House, the Star Newspapers, the CNN.
    We normally use “the” for names made with “…of…” e.g. the Straits of Malacca, the Stature of Liberty, the Bank of China.