Nouns

A noun is a word which names a person, animal, place or thing. Here are some examples of nouns: girl, lake, friend, India, square, school, truth, university, idea, Gandhi, uncle, pencil, stamp, vacation, teacher, history. Gandhi is a noun because it is the name of a person, India is a noun because it is the name of a place, and stamp is a noun because it is the name of a thing.

Nouns are further classified in to two kinds. Proper nouns and common nouns. Proper nouns are nouns that are capitalized because they are the names of a particular person, place or thing. Examples of proper nouns: India, Gandhi, Indian Ocean, Himalayas, Suann Avenue, Mumbai City, Pizza Hut. If you see a word beginning with capital letter in the middle of a sentence it is probably a proper noun. Most nouns are common nouns and do not begin with a capital letter. Many nouns have a plural form if they are more than one. For example, we say one pencil but two pencils. Plurals are generally formed by adding an ‘s’ as in (pencils) and ‘es’ as in (boxes. However, there are some exceptions. The plural of child is children, theplural of person is people, mouse is mice, sheep is sheep.