Count nouns
Count nouns have two forms: singular and plural.
Singular count nouns refer to one person or thing:
| a teacher | a book | a wish | an idea |
Plural count nouns refer to more than one person or thing:
| teachers | books | wishes | ideas |
Singular count nouns
Singular count nouns cannot be used alone. They must have a determiner:
| the English teacher | that book | a wish | my latest idea |
Plural count nouns
We usually add –s to make a plural noun:
| book | > | books |
| school | > | schools |
| friend | > | friends |
We add –es to nouns ending in –s, –ch, –sh, –ss, –x and –o:
| class | > | classes |
| watch | > | watches |
| gas | > | gases |
| wish | > | wishes |
| box | > | boxes |
| potato | > | potatoes |
When a noun ends in a consonant and –y, we make the plural with –ies:
| lady | > | ladies |
| country | > | countries |
| party | > | parties |
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 |
| person | > | people |
| foot | > | feet |
Plural count nouns do not have a general determiner when they refer to people or things in general:
Computers are very expensive.
Do you sell old books?
But they may have a specific determiner:
Those computers are very expensive.
The books in that shop are very expensive.
Her sisters live there.
or a quantifier:
| some new books | a few teachers | lots of good ideas |
or a numeral:
| two new books | three wishes |
Uncount nouns
Level: beginner
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 food. (NOT
foods)
We bought some new furniture. (NOTfurnitures)
That’s useful information. (NOTa 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
Some common nouns in English like information are uncount nouns even though they have plurals in other languages:
| advice | accommodation | baggage | equipment |
| furniture | homework | 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 … | a bit of … | an item of … |
| pieces of … | bits 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.
However, accommodation, money and traffic cannot be made countable in this way. We need to use other expressions:
I’ve lived in three flats/apartments. (NOT
bits of accommodation)
Smith received three large sums of money. (NOTpieces of money)
We got stuck in two traffic jams. (NOTpieces of traffic)
Common problems with count and uncount nouns
Level: beginner
Substances as count or uncount nouns
Substances are usually uncount nouns:
Would you like some cheese?
Coffee keeps me awake at night.
Wine makes me sleepy.
but they can also be 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. = They had over twenty [types of] cheese.
This is an excellent soft cheese. = This [kind of] soft cheese is excellent.
Nouns with both a count and an uncount form
Some nouns have both a count and an uncount form. Their meanings are closely related:
George had hopes of promotion.
We should always have hope.
There’s a danger of avalanches on the mountain.
Some people enjoy danger.
Level: intermediate
Nouns with two meanings
Some nouns have two meanings, one count and the other uncount:
Can I have a glass of water?
I cut myself on some glass.Is English a difficult language?
Linguistics is the study of language.The Times is an excellent paper.
It’s made of paper.
Other nouns like this are:
| business | industry | property | wood |
| power | time | work | hair |
Uncount nouns that end in –s
Some uncount nouns end in –s. They look like plural count nouns, but they are not.
Nouns like this 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.
Group nouns
Level: intermediate
Some nouns refer to groups of people, animals or things:
| army | audience | committee | company |
| crew | enemy | family | flock |
| gang | government | group | herd |
| 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 per cent.
and the police is always plural:
The police are offering a £5,000 reward.
Things with two parts
Level: intermediate
A few plural nouns refer to things that have two parts. They have no singular form. These are always things we wear:
| glasses/spectacles | trousers | shorts |
| pyjamas | pants | boxers |
| tights | jeans | knickers |
Those trousers are too long.
or implements:
| pliers | scissors | binoculars | pincers |
These binoculars were very expensive.
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
Level: beginner
Names of people, places and organisations are called proper nouns. We spell proper nouns with a capital letter:
| Muhammad Ali | Birmingham | China | Oxford University | the United Nations |
We use capital letters for festivals:
| Christmas | Deepavali | Easter | Ramadan | Thanksgiving |
We use capital letters for people’s titles:
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.
Level: intermediate
Sometimes we use a person’s name to refer to something they have created:
Recently a Van Gogh was sold for 15 million dollars.
We were listening to Mozart.
I’m reading an Agatha Christie.
Noun phrases
Level: intermediate
Often a noun phrase is just a noun or a pronoun:
People like to have money.
I am tired.
Premodifiers
But noun phrases can also include:
- determiners: Those houses are very expensive.
- quantifiers: I’ve lived in a lot of houses.
- numbers: My brother owns two houses.
- adjectives: I love old houses.
These parts of the noun phrase are called premodifiers because they go before the noun.
We use premodifiers in this order:
| determiners and quantifiers | > | numbers | > | adjectives + NOUNS |
For example:
| Determiners and quantifiers | Numbers | Adjectives | NOUNS |
| The | six | children | |
| Our | young | children | |
| Six | young | children | |
| These | six | young | children |
| Some | young | children | |
| All those | six | young | children |
| Their many | young | children |
Postmodifiers
Other parts of a noun phrase go after the noun. These are called postmodifiers.
Postmodifiers can be:
- prepositional phrases:
a man with a gun
the boy in the blue shirt
the house on the corner
- –ing phrases :
the man standing over there
the boy talking to Angela
- relative clauses :
the man we met yesterday
the house that Jack built
the woman who discovered radium
an eight-year-old boy who attempted to rob a sweet shop
- that clauses. These are very common after nouns like idea, fact, belief, suggestion:
He’s still very fit, in spite of the fact that he’s over eighty.
She got the idea that people didn’t like her.
There was a suggestion that the children should be sent home.
- to infinitives :
I’ve got no decent shoes to wear.
These are very common after indefinite pronouns and adverbs:
You should take something to read.
I need somewhere to sleep.
There may be more than one postmodifier:
an eight-year old boy with a gun who tried to rob a sweet shop
that girl over there in a green dress drinking a Coke