English for Beginners: Countable & Uncountable Nouns

Do you think English grammar is confusing? Ever wonder why can we say "a dollar" but we can't say "a money"? Why can we say "houses", but not "furnitures"? In this class, you will learn the grammar rules about countable and uncountable nouns in English, including when to use "a" or "an", when to add an "s" at the end of a noun to make it plural, and when you should NOT add an "s". You will also learn about the difference between "much" and "many". Test yourself with the quiz at https://www.engvid.com/countable-uncountable-nouns-english-grammar/

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FIX YOUR GRAMMAR MISTAKES! -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnrAM9QZ90U&list=PLaNNx1k0ao1u-x_nKdKNh7cKALzelzXjY&index=40

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I'm going to teach you about countable and uncountable nouns. We can also call these "count nouns" and "non-count nouns".

So, let's begin by first talking about: What is a noun? So, a noun is a word that is a person... It can be a person, so: "Emma", that's a noun; "teacher", that's a noun. It can be a place. "Russia" is a noun. "School" is a noun. It can be an animal; a dog. "Dog" is a noun. The word "cat" is a noun. It can also be a thing. This marker... The word "marker" is a noun. Okay? And it can also be a feeling. "Happiness" is a noun. So, a noun is a person, a place, a thing, an object, an animal. There are many things that are nouns.

What a noun is not is it's not an action, like a verb; it's not a description, like an adjective; and it's not a preposition, like the word "on" or "off". Okay? A noun is, like I've said before, one of these things. So, in English...

Well, actually, first let's do something. Let's underline the nouns just to make sure we have this concept. So, my first sentence is: "Canada is a large country." So let's underline the nouns, here. Well, "Canada" is a place, so we know "Canada" is a noun; "is" is a verb; "large" - this is a description; "country". "Country" is a place; this is also a noun.

"My teacher is funny". "Teacher" is a person, so this is a noun; "funny" is a description, it's an adjective, it's not a noun.

"The dog", so we have "dog" is an animal; "cats", "cats" are nouns; and we have the word, here, "friends". The word "friend" is also a noun. Okay? So, these are all nouns.

So, in English, we have two types of nouns; we have countable nouns and we have uncountable nouns. It's important to know if a noun is countable or uncountable, because this is going to tell us if we use words, like: "a" in front of the word, and it will also tell us which words we cannot use with these words. So... And whether or not we need to add an "s" to the end of the noun if there's more than one. So, in this video, we are going to talk about countable nouns with many examples and uncountable nouns. So, let's look at countable nouns first.

Okay, so we're going to start with countable nouns first. So, the first thing you need to know with a countable noun is when we have a countable noun, we need to put an "a" or an "an" in front of it. So, for example: "I have a dog. I have a computer. I have a lamp. I have a chair." So, notice I'm putting "a" in front of all of these. If the noun starts with a vowel sound, so for example: "a" is a vowel, "e", "i", "o", "u" - these are all vowels. And if it starts with a vowel sound, then we use "an". "I have an apple. I have an egg. I have an ant." Okay? So, we use this if the first... The first sound of the word is a vowel.

So, the second thing you need to know is that with countable nouns a lot of the time we can count them. Okay? So we can often... A countable noun is something you can count, or... Usually it's something, or an animal, or, you know, a place - it's something you can count. So, for example: "I have a book." This is one book. "I have two books.", "I have three books." So, this... You can count books and it's a countable noun. "I have two chairs. I have five dresses." These are all countable nouns.

When we have more than one countable noun, so for example, here we have one, here we have two. If we have more than one-so two, three, four, five, six-we need to add an "s". This shows us that there is more than one. And also notice that we don't need this in front of the noun anymore. So, we cannot say: "a books", because the "s" means there's more than one, so this would not match. Okay.

What else do we need? So, we need an "s" or an "es" if we have more than one of this type of object or noun. Here's another example: "I have one sister.", "I have three sisters." So, notice here, you can count the number of sisters I have, and so I've added an "s".

Now, we have some exceptions. For example, the word "moose". You can count the number of moose, but we never add an "s". It's... It's a strange exception. In English, you'll notice we have a lot of exceptions. We break rules a lot of times in English and that's okay. It's the same with "fish".