Hello I'm Emma from mmmEnglish! Now, you might already know that there are two types of English nouns, countable and uncountable nouns.
Knowing the difference between these nouns is really important and I can tell you right now that so many of the English grammar mistakes that you're making are to do with these different types of nouns. They affect the way that you use other words in English, words like articles and much and many, some and any, a little, a few!
Learning how to use uncountable and countable nouns with these words will really, dramatically improve your English grammar. In this video, I'm going to focus on countable nouns but I've made another lesson that's all about uncountable nouns.
You can check it out up there or you can wait to the end of this lesson and I'll link to it there. Okay! Some nouns are countable which means really simply, you can count them.
You can say that there are three, five or ten of these different nouns. For example, this is an apple and I've got three apples here.
They have singular and plural forms. Countable nouns have singular and plural forms, which means that you can use the articles 'a' or 'an' with the singular form of these nouns.
A lemon, an apple, a glass. Okay, so I said an apple and a lemon there, didn't I?
So, what's the difference? Well, 'a' or 'an' is just like saying that there is one of something, so it's used with a singular noun, never in the plural form.
We use 'a' in front of a noun that starts with a consonant sound. A banana, a cup, a plate, a potato, a lemon.
We use 'an' in front of a noun that starts with a vowel, a vowel sound, like an apple, an orange or an hour. Now, hour's a little tricky.
