Adjectives and nouns

Nouns and adjectives.

What are nouns?

Nouns are words that are used to represent a person, place or thing. Everything you can see, talk about, or touch are nouns. For instance a table is a noun. A nurse is a noun. In Dutch we would call these zelfstandige naamwoorden.

Another way to recognise nouns is if you can place a, an, or the, in front of the word.

 

What are adjectives?

Adjectives are used to describe a noun. Using the previous examples, the table could become the old table. Old here is an adjective to describe the noun table. Adjectives can go into different positions of a sentence.

  1. The old table. You're giving the table a quality, in this case old.
  2. John is upset. When there is a linking verb, in this case to be the adjective comes after the linking verb.
  3. Someone interesting. Here we're giving someone a quality, in this case interesting. You will usually find the adjective after a pronoun. (She, he, it, them, someone, something, etc. In Dutch we call these voornaamwoorden.)