## 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.

- The table, a table.
- The nurse, a nurse.
- The hour, an hour.

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.)