This is a clock. The word clock is a concrete noun. It's a concrete noun because
I can touch it. But what about 'time'? 'Time' is also a noun, but I can't touch it. 'Time'
is an example of an abstract noun. And that's what we're going to look at in this lesson.
Before we get started, make sure you click that subscribe button for great English language
learning videos every single week. Alright, let's get stuck into it. In today's lesson,
we'll learn what abstract nouns are. We'll find out the difference between abstract nouns and
concrete nouns. We'll look at lots of examples of abstract nouns, we'll find out about suffixes like
-ation -ness or -ship that you put onto a verb to make an abstract noun. We'll learn how to use
abstract nouns in sentences. And we'll look at countable and uncountable abstract nouns.
So what are abstract nouns? Abstract nouns represent things in the world that you cannot
perceive things that you cannot see or taste or touch, or smell words like love or economics or
beauty or science. So what's the difference between an abstract noun and a concrete Noun?
The easiest way to understand what an abstract noun is, is to compare it to a concrete noun.
So all nouns can be divided into concrete nouns or abstract nouns. An example of a concrete noun is a
chair. Why? Because you can see it, you can even sit on the chair. An abstract noun would be time,
because you can't see it. You can't hear it. You can't taste it, smell it, or touch it, but it's
still a noun. Another example of a concrete noun is a car. Again, we can see it we can smell it.
But what about love? Can we see love or smell or taste or touch love? No,
that's why it's an abstract noun. It's an abstract thing. Another concrete noun would be donkey.
Why? Because we can see it, we can hear it, we can probably smell it. But what about courage,
that's also a noun, that we can't see it. That's why we think of it as an abstract noun.
We can actually group abstract nouns into different categories. This will help you to
understand what they are more deeply. So abstract nouns can be ideas or emotions,
or traits or concepts. If we're talking about abstract ideas, ideas like life, death, dreams,
communication, hope, honour, benefit. These are all abstract nouns that are ideas. Love,
hatred, happiness, sadness, fear, joy, and anger. These are abstract nouns that are emotions.
Strength, bravery, courage, compassion, kindness, stupidity,
maturity. These are all traits. These are nouns and they're abstract nouns.
What about concepts like capitalism, socialism, causality, ethics, morals, economics, and science.
These are also abstract nouns. Now we can use a suffix to make an abstract noun.
So a suffix is just a little part of a word, and we can attach
a suffix to a verb to make an abstract noun. Let me explain. Look at this sentence here,
I develop software. Develop is a verb. Now look at this sentence. I work in software development.
So I've added the suffix -ment to the verb develop to create an abstract noun, development. There are
actually five different suffixes you can attach to a verb to create an abstract noun. Number one is
-ment like development, government and enjoyment. Number two is -ness, like happiness or kindness.
Number three is -tion like discussion or population. Number four is -ship,
like friendship or citizenship. And number five is -ity like ability or security. All of these words
are abstract nouns created by a suffix. So how do we use an abstract noun in a sentence?
So there's no difference between an abstract noun and a concrete noun.
When you put them into a sentence, the sentence structure is the same.
So an abstract noun can be the object of a sentence like I have a problem,
or you have a question, or Jim has a lot of courage. Sally believes in capitalism. We
love studying English. Studying English here is an abstract noun phrase, they study economics.
An abstract noun can also be the subject of a sentence, like science is helpful.
Compassion is important. Courage is thrilling. Capitalism seems to work. English is a language.
Economics is complicated. So you can see that abstract nouns work the same way as a
concrete noun in a sentence, but you do need to be careful. Countable and uncountable abstract nouns.
So nouns can also be divided into countable nouns or uncountable nouns. Countable nouns are things
that you can count, like two chairs, or three cars, or three donkeys. These are all examples
of concrete nouns that are countable, but you can also count some abstract nouns. For example,
I have had many loves in my life. Or we can use the word time, which is an abstract noun,
but we can say times. I exercised three times this week, so we can count it. Good, but some abstract
nouns are uncountable, you can't count them. You can just say courage. You can't say courages.
Happiness is also an abstract noun that is uncountable. You cannot say happinesses.
It's not countable. Okay, so here's our list again. These words here are countable,
abstract nouns. And these words here are uncountable abstract nouns.
Notice how you cannot put an S on the end of these words. Okay, let's recap what we've learned about
abstract nouns in this lesson. So we learned what abstract nouns are, we learned the difference
between abstract nouns and concrete nouns, we saw a list of examples of abstract nouns,
we learned how we can make an abstract noun by adding a suffix to a verb. We learned how
abstract nouns work in sentences. And finally, we looked at countable and uncountable abstract
nouns. Do you know any other abstract nouns? Can you think of any? What about thought? Put
them into the comments below? And while you're there, you should click that subscribe button
for more great English language learning videos. My name is Jay. I'll see you soon.