English Nouns

Common Noun is one of the nine types of Nouns, which denotes the name of a group or a type of existing phenomenon. Like the name suggests, Common Nouns refer to any living or non-living beings, places, or abstract ideas or thoughts. As long as a word is not named anything specific, it is considered to be a Common Noun.

A singular noun refers to one person, place, thing or idea, whereas, plural noun refers to more than one person, place, idea or things. For example 'cat', 'house', 'book' presents singular form and to indictae more than one thing or plural form, it will be written as 'cats', 'houses' and 'books'. While forming the plural form of singular nouns, candidates must abide with the grammatical rules. 

A compound noun is a noun formed by combination of two or more nouns to create a new meaning. For example, when we combine two nouns 'air' and 'plane' it forms a compound noun 'airplane'. Other examples are:

• Bookshop: book and shop
• Rainbow: rain and bow
• Sunflower: sun and flower

Nouns are important because they talk about people, place, things or ideas. Nouns acts as foundation in a sentence by acting as subject, verb and more. Without a noun in a sentence, it would look vague and incomplete. Nouns gives identification, builds sentence, acts as subject, and provides clarity.

• Countable nouns are things that can be counted as seperate items like two books, three pencils, five students. Whereas, uncountable nouns are nouncs which cannot be counted like water, hair, milk, etc.
• Countable nouns have both singular and plural forms, whereas, uncountable nouns does not have singular or plural forms. 

Yes, depending on the context and meaning in a sentence, a noun can be both, countable and uncountable. Such nouns are called dual-use nouns and their countability depends on how they're being used.

For example:

·       Here hair is very long (uncountable)

·       There are three hairs in my soup. (countable- refers to individual strands)

Try putting a number in front of a noun or make it plural. If it works, its countable; if it doesn't, it is probably uncountable.

For example:

Bus: There are fifteen buses in my school. (Correct)

Anxiety: I felt two anxious. (Incorrect as it is uncountable)

Abstract nouns are usually not countable, however, they can be countable in specific contexts.

For example:

·       He had two brilliant ideas.

·       She gave me a piece of information.

Some of the quantifiers that are used with countable nouns include- many, few, a few, several, each, every, some, any.

Examples:

·       There are many buses in the stand.

·       I kept a few chairs in the room.

·       There are several people in the park.

Yes, 'a' or 'an' is used with only singular countable nouns, not plurals.

For instance:

·       A cat is climbing up the tree.

·       There is an apple in the fridge.

·       There is a bus on the road.