Hey, guys! What's up? Welcome to our class!
In this class we'll explore we have seen in the situation video and interaction guide
and we'll talk a little bit about nouns and adjectives!
Let's start with the adjectives!
They're used to describe things, they express characteristics.
So, they always refer to nouns or pronouns!
Curious thing,
in English, adjectives don't change according to number or gender,
as it happens in some other languages.
That means that they do not have singular or plural forms,
nor feminine and masculine forms.
So, for example, we would say "tall girl", feminine singular noun.
But also, "tall girls" feminine plural nouns.
And if we use a masculine noun, such as boy,
the adjective is also the same.
Tall boy, tall boys.
Now, I don't know if you've realized, but you saw some adjectives in this topic.
For example:
Adjectives that refer to flights, such as:
And they wouldn't change if we talked about flights in the plural, for example:
And there's another difference, in many languages
the most common position for the adjective is after the noun.
But in English, adjectives usually come before the noun.
Let's see an example!
See that?
"Large" refers to the noun "cappuccino", so it comes before it.
Let's see one more!
In this one,
we also used the adjective "interesting" before the noun "products".
Notice that products is in the plural form,
and there's no variation of the adjective "interesting".
So, adjectives don't change their form and they come before nouns.
But now you may be thinking,
"Nouns? What are nouns?" Don't worry, I'm going to help you remember!
Nouns are basically words we use to name people, things, places,
feelings, experiences and so on,
and they can describe either concrete or abstract things.
Concrete nouns are those used to name things we can see or touch.
Such as:
Nouns are also used to name abstract things,
things we can't touch, like ideas, feelings, experiences and situations,
and they're called abstract nouns.
A good example of an abstract noun
we've mentioned a lot in this topic is "flight".
It refers to the experience of flying,
which is abstract, but still represented by a noun.
And guys, we can use adjectives with both concrete and abstract nouns,
take a look!
Here, we've got the adjective "delayed" and the abstract noun "flight".
In this one, we've got the adjective "large" and the concrete noun "cappuccino".
In both cases, we use the same structure,
an adjective + a noun.
As you can see, the type of noun doesn't affect the adjective.
But, different from adjectives, nouns vary in number.
So, they have singular and plural forms.
When we talk about one thing only, we use a singular noun.
And to talk about more than one thing, we use plural nouns.
Check some examples!
Note that to form the plural form of regular plural nouns like seat,
we just add "S" to the end of the word.
So, it becomes "seats".
This is the general rule,
there are other variations mainly regarding spelling,
depending on the noun ending.
What about irregular plural nouns?
Well, these nouns have different words for their singular and plural forms,
in this case we don't add "S" to the end of the word.
Sometimes there are slight changes, like in "woman", "women",
or "man" that becomes "men".
And sometimes, the word changes a lot!
"Person" that has the plural form "people".
What I like most, is that in English no matter the noun,
the adjective doesn't change its form!
So, you never have to worry,
no matter if the plural noun is regular or irregular!
Let's see some examples!
We've got the singular noun woman and the adjective tall.
And now:
Even though "women" is an irregular plural noun,
which means no "S" at the end of the word,
the adjective "tall" didn't change!
Now see this one:
See what we did there? We got the noun "flight and added an "s".
So, we got the regular plural noun "flights".
And check this out:
The adjective "cancel" didn't change at all!
And keep in mind that all nouns that have a plural form,
are things that we can count.
So, we called them countable nouns.
For example:
If I can say:
It means drugstore is a countable noun.
Why am I pointing that out?
Because there are things we can't count with units.
These are things that don't have a plural form.
So, we need different strategies to talk about their quantities!
For instance:
"Rice", we don't say "one rice", "two rices".
We count kilos of rice.
And money,
we don't say "I have five moneys",
instead we use a different noun, the currency and say:
"I have five dollars".
So, "rice" and "money" are examples of uncountable nouns.
Many languages have this distinction between countable and uncountable nouns.
And you've got to pay attention,
because sometimes a noun that is uncountable in your mother tongue,
maybe be countable in English and vice-versa.
For example, the world information has a plural form in several languages,
but in English it is uncountable so it has not plural form!
But what if we really need to count it?
We say "pieces of".
It may sound a bit weird to you,
but it's pretty common to do it
with most uncountable nouns, if we need to specify quantity.
Another one, "luggage" is uncountable, too.
So, we could say:
See? We used "pieces of" in order to count it!
And how to use adjectives with these uncountable nouns, you may be asking?
Easy, nothing changes!
The adjective remains the same and it's used in the exact same position.
Check it out!
"Heavy" is the adjective that qualifies "luggage",
Interesting is the adjective that qualifies information.
See that? Using adjectives in English is easy!
Now, do the follow-up activities,
to practice what you've learned here!
See you later, guys!