Verbs - Let's Do This!

    The basic definition of verbs is that they are actions and states of being.

    Actions are easy to understand: they are anything you can do with your body or your mind. If it is something you can do, it's a verb: run, swim, read, imagine, type, surf, etc.

    So what is a state of being? Basically, it is any form of the word BE. There are many and can have helping verbs as well. If you know the following, you can spot any in a sentence: am, is, are, was, were, be, being. Remember, they may need helping verbs.
Example: She was being as quiet as she could.
               He has been gone for two hours.
So look for one of those forms of be to see where to begin.

Different Kinds of Nouns

    There are four different kinds of nouns: proper,common, compound, and collective.

Proper vs.Common

   Proper nouns mean you are referring to a specific person,place,or thing.Common just means any person,place,or thing. Huh? Basically all you have to do is look at the first letter - if it is capitalized (like your first name), it is proper. If I talk about my friend, Sarah, I am referring to a specific person. If I am just talking about my friend (generic - no name), it is common. Bottom line,if it is capitalized, it is proper and if it is not,it is common. ALWAYS! Don't make it more complicated than it is.

Compound and Collective

   Unlike proper and common, not all nouns are compound and collective. Compound nouns occur when two or more nouns are combined to form a new thing.
Example: door + knob = doorknob
               middle + school = middle school
              bull's + eye = bull's-eye
As you can see, compound nouns can be one word, two separate words, or hyphenated.

    Collective nouns occur when you are talking about a group of people or things. When you are talking about your math class, it is easier to refer to those people as CLASS than listing all of their names.
Other examples: team, committee, flock, herd, audience, group, choir.

Nouns

    I will begin discussing nouns by starting with the basics. Nouns are people, places, things, and ideas. I grew up with the Schoolhouse Rocks series of cartoons. These were short (2-5 minute) cartoons  that came on in between the Saturday morning cartoons of my youth. They were educational on a variety of topics: math, science, history, and language arts. Even though they were educational, they were fun because they were always catchy songs. And these songs actually taught you something, I still remember the song for nouns: A noun's a special kind of word/ it's any name you ever heard/ I find it quite interesting/ a noun's a person, place,or thing. I highly suggesting digging it up on youtube.

    The person, place,or thing concept is easy enough. It's the idea concept that is tricky. Things like love, hate, freedom, democracy and rebellion are nouns - it's just that they are not things you can easily see. Try this tip: put the article a or an in front of the word. If it makes sense, you more than likely have a noun.
Example: They have a love of a lifetime.
               The United States is a democracy.
               They are planning a rebellion.
True it may not always work (They have a freedom?), but it will help you to spot a lot of those tricky idea nouns.

Parts of Speech Primer

    Before I begin discussing the parts of speech, I want to explain what they are and their importance. The English language consists of thousands and thousands of words. Every word, though, can be boiled down to 8 basic parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Of course, many words can be more than one of these, but I will get in to that later.

    So what's the significance? It is important to know how words function in a sentence to make sure you have complete sentences, that you use a variety of words in your writing, and that you use this information to express yourself as clearly as possible. Now is a future employer going to give you a sentence and ask you to state which part of speech each word is? He or she could if you want to be a writer or a journalist, or even an English teacher, but not likely. However, you could very well be asked by future teachers and professors to use more colorful adjectives and to make sure you are consistent with verb tense in an essay. If you have no clue what adjectives and verbs are, you will not be able to do as your teacher wants.

   My hope with this blog is to make learning and distinguishing the parts of speech as easy and painless as possible. Let's get started!