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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