Nouns

Let's go back to nouns, those wonderful building blocks that help make our sentences complete.

Nouns are things, people, and places, or in other words, nouns are the things we talk about.

I asked AI to generate this wonderful chart about nouns (thank you, AI).

Main Types / Categories of Nouns in English

Type	Explanation	Examples	Characteristics
Common noun	General name for a category	dog, city, feeling (i.e. happiness), table	Not capitalized (unless sentence-initial)
Proper noun	Specific name of a unique entity	Elon Musk, Paris, Monday, Coca-Cola	Capitalized, usually no article ("the")
Concrete noun	Can be perceived by the senses	apple, thunder, perfume, kitten	Tangible/observable
Abstract noun	Ideas, qualities, states, emotions	love, freedom, intelligence, chaos, happiness	Cannot be directly sensed
Countable noun	Can be counted (have singular & plural)	book → books, idea → ideas	Use a/an, numbers, many/few
Uncountable / Mass noun	Cannot be counted individually	water, rice, information, furniture	Use much/little, no a/an, no plural -s
Collective noun	Group of individuals considered as a unit	team, family, police, herd, jury	Can take singular or plural verb (AmE vs BrE difference)
Compound noun	Two or more words functioning as one noun	toothbrush, mother-in-law, ice cream	Can be one word, hyphenated, or separate
Gerund / Verbal noun	Verb + -ing functioning as a noun	swimming, reading, the killing	Retains some verb-like properties

You might have noticed how "happiness" is both a common noun and an abstract noun. It's also an uncountable noun. More about this later.

The important thing to remember is that "nouns' are words that help us name things. In the Montessori, nouns are represented by a black triangle.

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