Nouns: Articles

Earlier, I talked about placing “the” in front of English words. I’ve quietly used it in all examples so far. This chapter will finally explain it!

That little word is called an article. Articles tell us two things:

• A noun will follow
• If it’s a single thing (😀) or multiple things (😀😀)
• If it’s a reference to something mentioned earlier

Singular (😀)

General

If you refer to one thing in general, an a is placed before it.

If the noun starts with a vowel sound (if you pronounce it), you use an. This sounds beter, because otherwise you have two vowels right after each other.

Which dog? Don’t know. It’s a dog. Any of them. The general concept of a dog.

Specific

But if you refer to one specific thing, place the before it.

It’s not just a dog. It’s the dog I mentioned before!

In writing, we usually go from general to specific. First you have to introduce something, before you can refer back to that specific thing. So using these after each other is common:

Because we introduced the apple in the first sentence (with an), we can now use a specific noun (the) to talk about it.

Plural (😀😀+)

What if there isn’t one of something, but multiple? This is called a plural.

In this case, you

• Always use the
• And change the noun to plural form

What is plural form?

• Place an -s at the end.
• If it already ends with an s-like sound, place -es at the end instead.
• If it ends in -y, with no vowel before it, replace the y with -ies.

What are s-like sounds? These letter combinations: s, z, x, ch, sh. If you say them out loud, they sound like an “s”. That’s why they have a special rule. Just like a and an, they prevent doubling of the same letter.

But, without “a”, how do I describe a general noun? By leaving out the article entirely!

Many common nouns have irregular plurals. These are often the oldest words in the language, in a time when people wanted to differentiate these concepts more. (They couldn’t speak as well as now and certainly couldn’t write as well.)

You’ll learn them by reading a lot, but here are common ones …

Capitalization & Nationalities

You’ve already seen me capitalize some words that are not at the start of the sentence. Like “English”. And of course the pronoun “I”.

Like most languages, we sometimes use a capital letter for words within a sentence to communicate even more meaning to the reader. English, fortunately, has some easy rules for this.

A noun is capitalized if it is

• The first word of the sentence
• A name
• The first personal pronoun (I); you’ll learn these soon
• A month, day, season or holiday
• A name or title. (This includes names of streets, buildings, oceans, cities, regions, etcetera.)
• A language, nationality or adjective relating to nationality.

The names for countries, their language, and their corresponding adjective can differ a lot. They are quite irregular. Look up the right word for a country or culture when needed.

• In England live Englishmen, they speak English and drink English tea.
• In Spain live Spaniards, they speak Spanish and drink Spanish wine.
• In Holland live Dutchmen, they speak Dutch and make Dutch art.