Lesson 2.1 - Nouns

Everything that surrounds us has a noun: everything we see, hear, do, say... Very often an article precedes a noun. Because in our world we can find a lot of different things, nouns can adapt to things, so they change their gender and number.

Examples:

                                   masculine                          feminine
gender                    (j)attu (male cat)                (j)atta (female cat)
number                   (j)atti (male cats)               (j)atti (female cats)

Nouns can be analysed not only on their structure and composition, but on their meaning too.

Depending on the meaning, we get...

- common nouns: show people, animals, things, places without specification: alunnu (student), prufissuri (professor, teacher), scola (school);
- proper nouns: show specific people, animals, things, places: l'alunnu Antoniu (a student -called- Antonio), 'u prufissuri Paci (Mr. Paci), 'u liceo Garibbaldi (Garibaldi High School).

Common nouns can be classified into:

- concrete nouns: show real things you can see, hear, touch, smell: scarpa (shoe), tavula (table), palazzu (building);
- abstract nouns: show things we can't use the five senses to feel, so ideas, feelings, emotions: libbirtati (liberty, freedom), cuntintizza (contentment), filicitati (happiness);
- collective nouns: though they're singular, they show groups of homogeneous people, animals and things: brancu (herd), voscu (wood).

S.

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