My name's Ronnie, and today, you are going to learn very simple, but very essential - which
means important - grammar lesson.
Oh, grammar, it's terrible; it's easy.
And I am always amazed at the number of people who have been studying English for a long
time and maybe are intermediate or a higher level of English that don't know the basics
of English grammar; noun, verb, adverb, and adjective.
Even some native English speakers - no, I do - don't know this stuff.
So, if you are seeing this for the first time, don't feel bad if it's new; just come along
So, the first word I've written on the board is a noun.
Now, a noun is - I always remember this - a person, a place, or a thing.
Sometimes a noun is capitalized.
Now, "capitalized" means that there's a big letter, like a big "M" for "Mom", or the city
of Toronto, they have a capital letter - why, Ronnie? - because they are proper nouns.
A proper noun just means it's a name of a person or a place, and it must have a big
So, in a sentence at the beginning, if I put "Mom", I would put a capital letter.
Every time I have the name of a city or a country being a proper noun, it has to have
a capital as well, so be careful of that one.
So, a person would be "Mom"; a place would be "Toronto"; it can be a city, it can be
a town, a village - doesn't matter; and then a thing, and anything, really - a marker - anything
you see that's a thing is a noun.
So, we have lots of nouns all the time.
There's noun, noun, noun, noun, noun.
Remember, a noun is a person, a place, or a thing.
A noun is - yes, person, place, or thing.
See?
You might have studied in school the famous verb "to be", the verb "to be".
It's a verb, but a verb is an action word - dah, dah, dah, dah - or a state of being.
So, a lot of the times we get confused because we know the verb "to be" is a verb, but when
you think about it, you're like, "But it's not an action word!"
"Be" and "have" are also verbs, but they're not an action verb, but that's okay.
We don't have to follow the rules all the time.
So, basically, noun, person, place, thing, verb is an action word or a state of being.
And watch out for the conjugations, right?
There's "is", "am", "are" with the verb "to be", and we also have "have" or "has".
Now, if you need some help with those verbs, you can check out other lessons on www.engvid.com
or on YouTube, on my channel, and you can find those wonderful lessons, too.
But let's move on to the next one.
Now, this is the science of everything - oops - the science of the sound.
So, an adverb has the word "verb" in it, so that's fun.
So, I always remember it like this.
An adverb is going to describe a verb, so it tells us how the action was done.
For example, "slowly", "fast", "quietly", "loudly", "Rawr, rawr, rawr", "Ronnie, kick
We're talking about the verb, so the adverb is always going to talk about the verb.
Oh, that makes sense, cool, but then we have an adjective, and we have many, many, many,
many, many, many adjectives in English.
For example, "color", "purple", "shape", "round", "size", "big", "small", "large", "brut", adjectives
are all around us, and a lot of people get adverbs and adjectives confused, but you don't
have to, because if an adverb describes a verb, what do you think an adjective does?
An adjective is going to describe a noun, oh yeah, so if I wanted to describe my mom,
I can say "mom", which is my noun, then I can use a verb, "runs", "How does she run?"
"Mom runs fast", so in this sentence, "mom", because it's a person, is a noun, "runs" is
a verb, it's an action word, and then "fast" describes how my mom runs.
Let's use an example of a sentence using an adjective.
We have the noun of Toronto, Toronto's a city, it's a noun, it's a proper noun, it has to
have a capital, and oh, where's the verb here?
I don't see an action word, we don't have "runs" or "jump" or "hide", oh, "be", no,
"have", no, oh, oh, but remember, when you conjugate the verb "to be", oh, if it's singular,
we use "is", so we say "Toronto is", that's our verb, and then "big" is an adjective,
it describes Toronto, so "big" is the adjective that describes the place.
Tell me an adjective that would describe your city.
Is it big, small, is it loud, is it quiet, is it boring?
Another way that we use adjectives, talk about colour, so, for example, oh, meow, oh, hey,
guy, what's up, oh, look at the cat, so, the cat is red, I'm talking about the colour of
the cat, and I can say "the cat has", so this is my verb, "has a long tail", so let's look
at these sentences, and what we're going to do is we're going to find the noun, the verb,
the adverb, and the adjective, if we can, so let's look at this first sentence.
Oh, no, the cat, oh, don't jump, oh, the cat jumped off the table, he's okay, he's okay.
Mom is what, is it a noun, a verb, an adverb, or an adjective?
Mom is a person, so it's a noun.
Runs is an action word, it's a verb, we usually put a V for a verb, and fast is going to explain
how she runs, so we're going to use here an adverb.
Toronto is a noun, Toronto is verb big, big is an adjective, and here's another really
important tidbit of information, usually when we have the verb to be, it's going to be followed
by an adjective, Toronto is big, the cat is red, so in the next sentence, let's look at
the noun, the verb, and the adjective, so it's your chance, please tell me in the sentence
where the noun is in this sentence, the cat is big, so remember, the noun is a person,
a place, or a thing, meow, meow, oh, good, cat, so cat is the noun, and the verb is going
to be is, and then we're talking about or describing the cat, and we're talking about
the color, the cat is red, so red is going to be the adjective, so cat is the noun, is
the verb, and red is the adjective, hmm, we have another cat here, what can you tell me
about this cat, let's use an adjective, describe the cat, I can say the cat is pink, the cat
is cute, aw, so cute's an adjective as well, let's look at this sentence, this is yours,
you do this, and you tell me the answer, so I want you to tell me which is the noun, which
is the verb, which is the adjective, or the adverb, so the cat has a long tail, so person,
place, or thing, I'm going to use cat as our noun, verb, remember, has is a form of have,
so that's our verb, and then we're describing something, we're describing the cat's tail,
so long is our adjective, and tail is a person, a place, or a thing, it's a noun as well,
so you can have two nouns or two adjectives in a sentence, that's okay, so be creative,
make a sentence, so, learning the basics of English grammar, a noun, person, place, or
thing, a verb, action word, or state of being, adverb, describes the verb, or an adjective,
describing the noun, this one's the most confusing, will really, really help you with your basic
English grammar, and even in advanced English grammar, very, very important, well, I'm off
to go chase some kittens around, I'll talk to you later, buh-bye.