To work in a sentence, it must be obvious who the pronoun is referring to, which can be indicated in the same sentence (“Jenna washed her hair.”) or earlier on (“Jupiter is the fourth planet in the solar system. German, for example, capitalizes all nouns, but French doesn’t capitalize certain proper nouns, including “Monday” and “September.” PronounsĮxamples: she, him, they, it, ourselves, both, yours, anyĪ pronoun is a word that can stand in for another noun or set of nouns. But be warned that this isn’t the case in every language.

In English, proper nouns are often differentiated with capitalization.

A common noun would be “planet,” which can refer to any of the billions of planets in the universe, but the proper noun “Mars” refers only to our planetary neighbor (or, in a different context, a candy company). Proper nouns refer to one specific thing. Proper NounsĮxamples: Detroit, Germany, Thomas, Google, the BeatlesĬommon nouns, like the ones mentioned above, refer to a category of things. Every sentence needs at least one noun, but there are often multiple. It’s one of the largest categories of words, because it needs to encompass, well, pretty much any object you can imagine. The Parts Of Speech NounsĮxamples: piano, cars, theory, planet, waiting room, seesaw, humankind, malleability, catsĪ noun is a person, place, thing or idea. You can “drive” (verb) or go for a “drive” (noun) or be a “driven” person (adjective). A noun is a noun, no matter what language it’s in.Īnd as one last note before starting, remember that words can qualify as many different parts of speech, depending on the context. But every language has the same parts of speech, even if they appear in different places in the sentence.

While you might not have to think about them on a daily basis, being able to call up the definitions can make language learning a lot easier.įor the sake of this article, all of the examples below will be English words (if you’re reading this, you probably know at least some English). Sure, you know nouns and verbs, but how sure are you of the difference between a preposition and an adverb? If you need a quick refresher, here’s a guide to all of the parts of speech. You were probably taught them at a very young age, but they can be trickier than you remember. Parts of speech are the building blocks of grammar.

What part of speech is the