It is the prime intention of all to learn English, the World Language, well. It is his /her dream to master the language and to express it through the speech and writing. But before mastering the language it is better to know the grammar of it. For it is inevitable to learn English grammar to have a keen sense of the language. Without it the learner is nothing but a man groping in the dark from time indefinite.
Among the eight parts of speech the noun comes first as noun is the name of anything whether it is the person, a place, an idea or anything else. Hence in a word we can easily say that noun is nothing but a naming word. It is noun that plays the most vital role in a sentence. So without the use of a noun it is quite impossible to use a sentence or express any feeling.
Now it is the first and foremost duty of the leaner of the English grammar to pick out from a sentence the nouns and try to differentiate it with the other parts of speech. It has to be noted that there are five nouns.
Proper noun- It is that noun which denotes the name of anything under the sun. It may be a person, a thing, a material, an idea, any thing or event as distinct from every other.
Mary is my sister.
In this word Mary is the name of a woman, similarly London, The Thames, The Alps, The French Revolution, The Ramayana, The Telegraph etc.
Common noun- It denotes no one person or thing in particular but is common to any and every person or thing of the same kind. Thus when we use ‘man’ we denote no particular man but the every man, ‘book’ not any particular book like the Bible or the Geeta, the Koran etc. but any and every book.
Abstract noun- It is the name of a quality, action or state belonging to an object.
Thus we can mention Softness, smile, wealth, silence etc.
Collective noun- A collective noun is the name of a group or collection of persons or things taken as a whole.
We can say in this manner:
A flock of sheep are grazing in the field.
In this sentence “a flock of sheep” is the collective noun. “Sheep” is a common noun as it stands for any and every sheep; flock is a collective noun as it stands for all the sheep referred to.
Material noun- A material noun denotes the name or substance, of which things are made. Thus we can say that ‘river’ is a common noun, but ‘water’ of which it is made is nothing but a material noun.
The other things that the learners have to keep in mind are:
1) A noun can not go without a verb.
2) The first letter of a proper noun must be capitalized.