hi everybody my name is Alisha welcome
back to English class 101 comms YouTube channel today I'm going to talk about
countable nouns I'm going to talk about how to make the plural form of countable
nouns I'm going to talk about a few question patterns you can use with
countable nouns and I'm going to talk about some quantifiers for countable
nouns so let's get started okay so the first point maybe the most important
point first of all is that countable nouns are nouns which we can count we
use numbers 1 2 & 3 and we can count the numbers of these nouns they are
countable able to be counted that's the first point for today's lesson second
countable nouns have a singular form single here you can see single is the
base one singular form and a plural form plural meaning more than one so the
words themselves have a singular form one of something and a plural form more
than one of something a couple of notes about singular form and plural form
however singular form nouns we have to use a determiner so for example
determiners are like articles like or an or the or we could use this that my his
her for example we need some kind of determiner something that gives us
information about a singular noun we must use a determiner with a singular
noun so we have to say a dog or his dog or my dog we cannot simply say dog in
this with a singular form so please be careful if you use the singular form of
a noun you need to use a determiner ok let's look at the plural form my note
for the plural form here is that no determiner is required so you don't
always have to use a determiner here with the plural form the dogs his dogs
her dogs for example but if you're referring generally to a group no
determiner should be used so this is a very common
mistake for example if talking about all teachers or all doctors or making a
general statement about a group of people for example no determiner should
be used we should not use the doctors or the teachers unless you're talking about
a specific group of doctors or a specific group of teachers if you want
to make a general statement about all people are all countable nouns in one
category no determiner should be used so please be careful okay so these are two
points about the singular form and the plural form so please be careful of this
okay let's continue on to how to make the plural forms of nouns there are a
few different rules to consider here so first the regular way to make a plural
noun is to just add an S to the end of the noun so for example dogs we add an S
computers and cars so these are simple simple plural form nouns we just add an
S to the end of the noun to make the plural form however there are some cases
where the spelling will change slightly and the pronunciation will also change
slightly the basic S sound is still there however it's an es sound so it's
noun + es when do we do this we do this with nouns that end in X in ch SS s or
SH this is kind of difficult to remember I think that if you practice if you read
a lot and if you speak a lot you'll gradually come to understand this this
is something I personally never studied as a native speaker but through practice
through reading a lot - I gradually came to understand which nouns take ES and
which nouns do not but some examples here foxes Fox ends in X so it takes ES
in the plural form classes class ends in SS so we take ES for the plural form
finally sandwich sandwich ends in eh so we add es very important so not
sandwiches with a with noe but we need to use an e in the word sandwiches
please be careful okay finally there is one more different spelling for plural
nouns here we have noun + IES if the noun ends in a why a why we we drop the
Y in the plural form we cut the Y and add IES so a few examples of this are
countries we have IES know Y here we have candies again know Y IES and copies
so know Y and IES so these are three ways to make plural forms adding es or
an es sound or just a simple s so depending on the noun you would like to
make plural you need to kind of remember these rules or at least think about them
a little bit until you kind of get used to making mountains correctly okay but I
want to go to something a little bit more challenging which is nouns which
have irregular plural forms so these are countable nouns but they don't follow
the s rule we can't just add s to make these nouns plural let's take a look at
a few so one for example is person the noun person we can say one person
however the plural form is people two people three people four people please
keep this in mind another very common one especially for pronunciation is
woman to women and man to men please be careful of your vowel pronunciation here
in particular woman and women the first vowel o here does not change in terms of
spelling but in pronunciation it does change women sounds much different than
the singular form woman so please be careful sometimes poor pronunciation can
cause difficulties in understanding or poor communication so this is a great
pronunciation point both woman and man so
man becomes men a very clear vowel sound change there so these two are a couple
to be very very careful of and to practice as well some nouns however do
not change in the plural form some nouns for example fish fish does not change we
use fish and fish in the singular and the plural form if you are curious about
how to know whether you're reading something or hearing something about
singular fish or plural fish in most cases you can guess based on the
situation based on the context if it's very very difficult then I suppose the
author might include a number before the word fish like to fish or three fish but
in most cases this isn't an issue the same thing applies to sheep actually
sheep the plural form of sheep is also sheep there is no change here but we can
count them as two sheep three sheep four sheep for example okay a few more the
singular form of child becomes the plural form children please be careful
their foot becomes feet tooth becomes teeth and one more interesting one mouse
mouse becomes mice in the plural form two mice three mice four mice so these
are just a few examples of some of the irregular plural forms you can find with
countable nouns this is not everything for sure but these are some very common
examples I think okay let's continue on to a few question patterns with
countable nouns so the first one I have is how many blah blah blahs please keep
in mind when you are asking a quantity question with countable nouns you need
to use how many please do not use how much with a countable noun we use how
much with uncountable nouns so how many plus an S sound don't forget this S
sound many people forget how many pens how many dogs how many children
in that case there's no s-sound but if you are using a noun with an s-sound
please make sure that as sound is very clear but in any case you need to use
the plural form after how many okay a couple of other examples maybe you've
seen our other YouTube videos about any and some so here I have an example do
you verb any plural form so here again there's that s sound if your noun ends
in an S make it very very clear when you pronounce it so do you have any pets for
example or do you need any strawberries for example so here I've got verb and
I've got any plus s so this is maybe making an offer or asking for
information something you need some kind of
information if you're asking this question I wouldn't be an offer but
asking for information this is the kind of question you might be able to use
with countable nouns finally to make a request as we talked about in the some
video any in some video can I have some plus the plural form so can I have some
cookies for example or can I have some cupcakes for example so again please
make sure your s sound is very clear at the end of this sentence
all right the last thing I want to talk about for this lesson is quantifiers so
quantifiers we use with the plural form please do not use quantifiers with the
singular form we use quantifiers to talk about amounts how much or how many of
something for countable nouns we're going to talk about how many of
something we have or don't have for example so we can use no with a
quantifier so I have no pets for example we can say that or I don't have any pets
here I have don't plus verb plus any so I don't have any pets or I don't need
any cupcakes I'm thinking about cupcakes today so I don't need any blah blah blah
we can replace the verb here with the verb of your choice there's almost no
almost no I've kind of put this up a little further on this spectrum from the
zero to 100 so it's very close to zero so I have almost no pancakes left in my
kitchen for example so not very many in other words just above that maybe would
be hardly any hardly any so there are hardly any children in school today
for example maybe around here on this spectrum a couple of a couple of the
word couple is here it has the nuance of two two so there are a couple of dogs in
the park for example just above a couple of might be a few a few a few in my mind
sounds like maybe three or four for example like there are a few birds in
the tree outside the office several sounds to me like more than a few a
larger number than a couple of or a few so to use several in a sentence for
example there are several clocks in the office the next one I've got some here
I've put some tentatively at about fifty some is very very vague some can mean a
small amount or it can mean maybe a reasonable amount of something but
generally it's somewhere around here on my 0 to 100 scale so you can feel kind
of about how much some is yeah so for example I ate some what did I eat today
I ate some salads last week or something like that so it's kind of a vague
expression but we can't really guess how many are here but some can tell us just
that maybe more than a few were consumed in my example sentence so some against
some is rather vague maybe it's not as clear as some of the other expressions
but you can kind of figure it out for yourself when you'd like to use it all
right the next one lots of and a lot of are about in the same point here on the
spectrum so lotsa means lots of there there's a good number of
something so for example I got lots of letters in the mail last Christmas so it
refers to a good number of something next up maybe quite a few so quite a few
of something so I got quite a few emails last week we could say towards the end
here we have tons of and a bunch of these sound rather casual tons of and a
bunch of again very very large quantity so I ate tons of sweets last weekend or
I bought a bunch of CDs last weekend for example so a very very large quantity
and finally we can use the word all with countable nouns like for example maybe
all the children went to school today or all the women in the room left suddenly
so we can use all with countable nouns just again please make sure to use the
plural form with these so all of these are some examples of quantifiers we can
use with countable nouns you'll see two I have green stars on some of these just
a note the ones with green stars we can use these with countable and uncountable
nouns so I know sometimes it's difficult to guess is an accountable noun is it an
uncountable noun what quantifier should I use I don't know these are a few that
you can use with both countable and uncountable nouns so if you're stuck if
you can't remember you can try using one of these like lots of and a lot of some
these are very very useful ones I think so try to keep these in mind a couple of
these in mind so if you have trouble remembering which ones are for countable
nouns and which ones are for uncountable nouns you can remember this okay so
that's just a quick introduction to countable nouns I hope that this was
useful for you if you have any questions or comments or I want to try to make a
sentence please feel free to do so in the comment section below this video
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